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TOGETHER 


BY 


ROBERT HERRICK 


AUTHOR OF “THE REAL WORLD,” “THE COMMON 
LOT,” “ THE MEMOIRS OF AN AMERICAN 
CITIZEN,” ETC. 


New Pork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1908 


‘e 
All rights reserved ~ 


Coprrigut, 1908, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and electrotyped. Published July, r908. Reprinted 
three times July, August, twice, 1908. 


Norwood Jress 
J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


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“ ate f 


TOGETHER 


CHAPTER I 


SHE stood before the minister who was to marry them, 
very tall and straight. With lips slightly parted she looked 
at him steadfastly, not at the man beside her who was about 
to become her husband. Her father, with a last gentle press- 
ure of her arm, had taken his place behind her. In the hush 
that had fallen throughout the little chapel, all the restless 
movement of the people who had gathered there this warm 
June morning was stilled, in the expectation of those ancient 
words that would unite the two before the altar. Through 
the open window behind the altar a spray of young woodbine 
had thrust its juicy green leaves and swayed slowly in the 
air, which was heavy with earthy odors of all the riotous new 
growth that was pushing forward in the fields outside. And 
beyond the vine could be seen a bit of the cloudless, rain- 
washed sky. 

There before the minister, who was fumbling mechanically 
at his prayer-book, a great space seemed to divide the man 
and the woman from all the others, their friends and relatives, 
who had come to witness the ceremony of their union. In 
the woman’s consciousness an unexpected stillness settled, 
as if for these few moments she were poised between the past 
of her whole life and the mysterious future. All the preoccu- 
pations of the engagement weeks, the strange colorings of 
mood and feeling, all the petty cares of the event itself, had 
suddenly vanished. She did not see even him, the man she 
was to marry, only the rugged face of the old minister, the bit 
of fluttering vine, the expanse of blue sky. She stood before 
the veil of her life, which was about to be drawn aside. 

3 


4 TOGETHER 


This hushed moment was broken by the resonant tones of 
the minister as he began the opening words of the sacrament 
that had been said over so many millions of human beings. 
Familiar as the phrases were, she did not realize them, could 
not summon back her attention from that depth within of 
awed expectancy. After a time she became aware of the 
subdued movements in the chapel, of people breaking into 
the remote circle of her mystery, —even here they must 
needs have their part, — and of the man beside her looking 
intently at her, with flushed face. It was this man, this one 
here at her side, whom she had chosen of all that might have 
come into her life; and suddenly he seemed a stranger, 
standing there, ready to become her husband! The wood- 
bine waved, recalling to her flashing thoughts that day two 
years before when the chapel was dedicated, and they two, 
then mere friends, had planted this vine together. And 
now, after certain meetings, after some surface intercourse, 
they had willed to come here to be made one. .. . 

‘‘And who gives this woman in marriage?” the minister 
asked solemnly, following the primitive formula which sym- 
bolizes that the woinan is to be made over from one family 
to another as a perpetual possession. She gave herself of 
course! The words were but an outgrown form... . 
There was the necessary pause while the Colonel came for- 
ward, and taking his daughter’s hand from which the glove 
had been carefully turned back, laid it gently in the minister’s 
large palm. The father’s lips twitched, and she knew he was 
feeling the solemnity of his act, — that he was relinquishing 
a part of himself to another. Their marriage — her father’s 
and mother’s — had been happy, — oh, very peaceful! And 
yet — hers must be different, must strike deeper. For the 
first time she raised her shining eyes to the man at her 
Bie. 1: te: 

“T, John, take thee Isabelle for my wedded wife, to have 
and to hold . . . in sickness and in health . . . until death 
us do part . . . and hereby I plight thee my troth.” 

Those old words, heard so many times, which heretofore 


TOGETHER 5 


had echoed without meaning to her, —she had vaguely 
thought them beautiful, — now came freighted with sudden 
meaning, while from out the dreamlike space around sounded 
the firm tones of the man at her side repeating slowly, with 
grave pauses, word by word, the marriage oath. “I, John, 
take thee Isabelle,” that voice was saying, and she knew that 
the man who spoke these words in his calm, grave manner 
was the one she had chosen, to whom she had willed to give 
herself for all time, — presently she would say it also, — 
for always, always, ‘until death us do part.’ He was 
promising it with tranquil assurance, — fidelity, the eternal 
bond, throughout the unknown years, out of the known 
present. ‘And eeey I plight thee my troth.” Without a 
tremor the man’ iu voice registered the oath— before 
God and man. ~ 4 

“T, Isabelle,” and the priest took up with her this primal 
oath of fidélity, body and soul. All at once the full personal 
import of the words ie we and her low voice swelled 
unconsciously with her affi pmMation..... She was to be for always 
as she was now. They two | h had not, been one before: the 
words did not make them so now.) It was their desire. 
But the old divided selves, the old i 
die, here, forever. 

She heard herself repeating the words after the minister. 
Her strong young voice in the stillness of the chapel sounded 
strangely not her own voice, but the voice of some unknown 
woman within her, who was taking the oath for her in this 
barbaric ceremony whereby man and woman are bound to- 
gether. ‘‘And hereby I plight thee my troth,’’ — the voice 
sank to a whisper as of prayer. Her eyes came back to the 
man’s face, searching for his eyes. 

There were little beads of perspiration on his broad brow, 
and the shaven lips were closely pressed together, moulding 
the face into lines of will, — the look of mastery. What was 
he, this man, now her husband for always, his hand about hers 
in sign of perpetual possession and protection? What beneath 
all was he who had taken with her, thus publicly, the mighty 












ae TOGETHER 


oath of fidelity, ‘until death us do part’? Each had said 
it; each believed it; each desired it wholly. Perversely, 
here in the moment of her deepest feeling, intruded the con- 
sciousness of broken contracts, the waste of shattered pur- 
poses. Ah, but theirs was different! This absolute oath of 
fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and his own 
desire, —this irredeemable contract of union between man 
and woman, —it was not always a binding sacrament. 
Often twisted and broken, men and women promising in 
the belief of the best within them what was beyond their 
power to perform. There were those in that very chapel 
who had said these words and broken them, furtively or 
legally. .. . With them, of course, it would be different, 
would be the best; for she conceivedetheir love to be of 
another kind, — the ‘enduring kind. Vibe Stel word just wi 
while the priest of society pronounce the f na 

something spoke within the womai ’s sou 

strange oath to be taking, a strange ma 

living beings one! 














“And I pronounce you man @ the w | 
Then the minister hastened on into his little homily upon the 
marriage state. But the woman’s thought rested at those 
fateful words, — ‘‘man and wife, ”? —.the knot of the con- 


tract. There should fall a new light in her heart that would 
make her know they were really one, having now been joined 
as the book said “in holy wedlock.” From this sacramental 
union of persons there should issue to both a new spirit. . . . 

Her husband was standing firm and erect, listening with all 
the concentration of his mind to what the minister was saying 
—not tumultuously distracted —as though he comprehended 
the exact gravity of this contract into which he was entering, 
as he might that of any other he could make, sure of his power 
to fulfil all, confident before Fate. She trembled strangely. 
Did she know him, this other self? In the swift apprehen- 
sion of life’s depths which came through her heightened 
mood she perceived that ultimate division lying between all 
human beings, that impregnable fortress of the individual 


9 


TOGETHER 7 


soul. . It was all over. He looked tenderly at her. 
Her lips trembled with a serious smile, — yes, ey would 
understand now! 

The people behind them moved more audibly. The thing 
was done; the priest’s words of exhortation were largely 
superfluous. All else that concerned married life these 
two would have to find out for themselves. The thing wag 
done, as ordained by the. church, according to the rules of 
society. Now it was for Man and Wife to a of it what 
they would or — could. 

The minister closed his book in dismissal. The. groom 
offered his arm to the bride. Facing the» chapelful she 
came out of that dim world of wonder whither she had 

thrown back, head pfoudly erect, eyes 

7 as ranging coy the onlookers: she descended the altar 
. wh ie ye over the black figures, 

ll “green, beyond into the vista of life! 
ny phant organ notes beat through the chapel, as 
L je tween the Faking ae a faces, — familiar 



















bein with the grace of her “I fong cide, her head 
raised, a little smile on her open lips, her hand just ste 
his, — going forward with him into life. 

Only two faces stood out from the others at this moment, 
—the dark, mischievous, face of Nancy Lawton, smiling 
sceptically. Her dark, little eyes seemed to say, ‘Oh, you 
don’t know yet!’ And the other was the large, placid face of 
a blond woman, older than the bride, standing beside a stolid 
man at the end of a pew. The serene, soft eyes of this 
woman were dim with tears, and a tender smile still lingered 
on her lips. She at least, Alice Johnston, the bride’s cousin, 
could smile through the tears —a smile that told of the 
sweetness in life. .... 

At the door the frock-coated young ushers formed into 
double line through which the couple passed. The village 
green outside was flooded with sunshine, checkered by droop- 


© 


8 TOGETHER 

ingelm branches. Bells began to ring from the library across 
the green and from the schoolhouse farther down. It was 
over —the fine old barbaric ceremony, the passing of the 
irredeemable contract between man and woman, the public 


». proclamation of eternal union. Henceforth they were man 







| wife before the law, before their kind — one and one, 
_ and yet not two. 
_ Thus together they passed out of the church. 





CHAPTER II 


THE company gathered within the chapel for the wedding 
now moved and talked with evident relief, each one express-° 
ing his feeling of the solemn service. 

“Very well done, very lovely!” the Senator was murmur- 
ing to the bride’s mother, just as he might give an opinion 
of a good dinner or some neat business transaction or of a 
smartly dressed woman. It was a function of life successfully 
performed — and he nodded gayly to a pretty woman three 
rows away. He was handsome and gray-haired, long a 
widower, and evidently considered weddings to be an 
attractive, ornamental feature of social life. Mrs. Price, 
the bride’s mother, intent upon escaping with the Colonel 
by the side door and rejoining the bridal party at the house 
before the guests arrived on foot, scarcely heeded the amiable 
Senator’s remarks: This affair of her daughter’s marriage 
was, like most events, a matter of engrossing details. The 
Colonel, in his usual gregarious manner, had strayed among 
the guests, forgetful of his duties, listening with bent head 
to congratulatory remarks. She had to send her younger son. 
Vickers, after him where he lingered with Farrington Beals, 
the President of the great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, in 
which his new son-in-law held a position. When the Colonel 
finally dragged himself away from the pleasant things that 
his old friend Beals had to say about young Lane, he looked 
at his impatient wife with his tender smile, as if he would 
like to pat her cheek and say, “ Well, we’ve started them 
right, haven’t we?” 

The guests flowed conversationally towards the door and 
the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But 
play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble 

9 


>, 


10 TOGETHER 


of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable 
commonplaces that seem somehow to cover at such times 
deep meanings. 

“What a perfect wedding!” 

“How pretty it all was!” 

“Not a hitch.” 

“She looked the part.” | 

“Good fellow — nice girl — ought to be happy ... Well, 


_ old man, when is your turn coming? .. . Could hear every 
word they said ... looked as though they meant it, 


29 # 


too! .. 

In an eddy of the centre aisle a tall, blond young woman 
with handsome, square shoulders and dark eyes stood 
looking about her calmly, as if she were estimating the gather- 
ing, setting each one down at the proper social valuation, 


deciding, perhaps, in sum that they were a very “mixed lot,” 


old friends and new, poor and rich. A thin girl, also blond, 
with deep blue eyes, and a fine bony contour of the face, was 
swept by the stream near the solitary observer and held out 
a hand: — 

“Cornelia !”’ 

“ Margaret!” 

“Tsn’t it ideal!’”? Margaret Lawton exclaimed, her ner- 
vous face still stirred by all that she had felt during the ser- 
vice, — “the day, the country, and this dear little chapel !” 

“Very sweet,’ the large woman replies in a purring 
voice, property. modulated for the sentiment expressed. 
“Isabelle made an impressive bride.” And these two 
school friends moved on towards the door. Cornelia 
Pallanton, still surveying the scene, nodded and said to 
her companion, “There’s your cousin Nannie Lawton. 
Her husband isn’t here, I suppose? There are a good many 
St. Louis people.”’ 

The guests were now scattered in little groups over the 


green, dawdling in talk and breathing happily the June- . 
scented air. The stolid man and his placid wife who had © 


sat near the rear had already started for the Colonel’s houre,, 


H 


TOGETHER 11 


following the foot-path across the fields. They walked 
silently side by side, as if long used to wordless companion- 
ship. 

_ The amiable Senator and his friend Beals examined criti- 
cally the little Gothic chapel, which had been a gift to his 
native town by the Colonel, as well as the stone library at 


the other end of the green. “Nice idea of Price,’ the . 


Senator was saying, “handsome buildings — pleasant little 
village,’”’ and he moved in the direction of Miss Pallanton, 
who was alone. 

Down below in the valley, on the railroad siding, lay the 
special train that had brought most of the guests from New 
York that morning. The engine emitted little puffs of white 
smoke in the still noon, ready to carry its load back to the 
city after the breakfast. About the library steps were the 
carriages of those who had driven over from neighboring 
towns; the whole village had a disturbed and festal air. 

The procession was straggling across the village street 
through the stile and into the meadow, tramping down the 
thick young grass, up the slope to the comfortable old white 
house that opened its broad verandas like hospitable arms. 
The President of the Atlantic and Pacific, deserted by the 
Senator, had offered his arm to a stern old lady with knotty 
hands partly concealed in lace gloves. Her lined face had 
grown serious in age and contention with life. She clung 
stiffy to the arm of the railroad president, — proud, silent, 
and shy. She was his mother. From her one might con- 
clude that the groom’s people were less comfortably circum- 
stanced than the bride’s — that this was not a marriage of 
ambition on the woman’s part. It was the first time Mrs. 
Lane had been “back east”’ since she had left her country 
home as a young bride. It was a proud moment, walking 
with her son’s chief; but the old lady did not betray any 
elation, as she listened to the kindly words that Beals found 
to say about her son. 

“A first-rate railroad man, Mrs. Lane, — he will move up 
rapidly. We can’t get enough of that sort.” 


~ 


ie 


12 TOGETHER 


The mother, never relaxing her tight lips, drank it all 
in, treasured it as a reward for the hard years spent in keep- 
ing that boarding-house in Omaha, after the death of her 
husband, who had been a country doctor. 

“He’s a good son,’”’ she admitted as the eulogy flagged. 
“ And he knows how to get on with all kinds of folks. . . .” 

At their heels were Vickers Price and the thin Southern 
girl, Margaret Lawton. Vickers, just back from Munich for 


-. this event, had managed to give the conventional dress that 


he was obliged to wear a touch of strangeness, with an 
enormous flowing tie of delicate pink, a velvet waist- 
coat, and broad-brimmed hat. The clothes and the full 
beard, the rippling chestnut hair and pointed mustache, 
showed a desire for eccentricity on the part of the young 
man that distinguished him from all the other well-dressed 
young Americans. He carried a thin cane and balanced a 
cigarette between his lips. 

“Yes,” he was saying, “I had to come over to see Isabelle 
married, but I shall go back after a look around — not the 
place for me!” He laughed and waved his cane towards 
the company with an ironic sense of his inappropriateness 
to an American domestic scene. 

“You are a composer, — music, isn’t it?” the girl asked, a 
flash in her blue eyes at the thought of youth, Munich, 
music. 

“T have written a few things; am getting ready, you know,” 
Vickers Price admitted modestly. 

Just there they were joined by a handsome, fashionably 
dressed man, his face red with rapid walking. He touched 
his long, well-brushed black mustache with his hamdkerchiet 
as he explained: — ae 

“Missed the train — missed the show — but got here in 
time for the fun, on the express.” 

He took his place beside the girl, whose color deepened 
and eyes turned away, — perhaps annoyed, or pleased ? 

“That’s what you come for, isn’t it?” she said, forcing 
a little joke. Noticing that the two men did not speak, 


TOGETHER 13 


she added hastily, ‘Don’t you know Mr. Price, Mr. Vickers | 
Price? Mr. Hollenby.”’ 

The newcomer raised his silk hat, sweeping Vickers, who 
was fanning himsélf with his broad-brimmed felt, in a light, 
critical stare. Then Mr. Hollenby at once appropriated the 
young woman’s attention, as though he would indicate that 
it was for her sake he had taken this long, hot journey. 


There were other little groups at different stages on the hill, 
—one gathered about a small, dark-haired woman, whose 
face burned duskily in the June sun. She was Aline Goring, 
—the Eros of that schoolgirl band at St. Mary’s who had 
come to see their comrade married. And there was Elsie 
Beals, — quite elegant, the only daughter of the President 
of the A. and P. The Woodyards, Percy and Lancey, 
classmates of Vickers at the university, both slim young men, 
wearing their clothes carelessly, — clearly not of the Hollenby 
manner, —had attached themselves here. Behind them was 
Nan Lawton, too boisterous even for the open air. At the 
head of the procession, now nearly topping the hill beneath 
the house, was that silent married couple, the heavy, sober 
man and the serene, large-eyed woman, who did not mingle 
with the others. He had pointed out to her the amiable 
Senator and President Beals, both well-known figures in the 
railroad world where he worked, far down, obscurely, as 
a rate clerk. His wife looked at these two great ones, who 
indirectly controlled the petty destiny of the Johnstons, and 
squeezed her husband’s hand more tightly, expressing thus 
many mixed feelings, — content with him, pride and confi- 
dence in him, in spite of his humble position in the race. 

“Tt’s just like the Pilgrim’s Progress,’’ she said with a little 
smile, looking backward at the stream. 

“But who is Christian?” the literal husband asked. Her 
eyes answered that she knew, but would not tell. 


Just as each one had reflected his own emotion at the 


“ marriage, so each one, looking up at the hospitable goal ahead, 


14 TOGETHER 


—that irregular, broad white house poured over the little 
Connecticut hilltop, —had his word about the Colonel’s 
home. 

“No wonder they call it the Farm,’’ sneered Nan Lawton 
to the Senator. 

“Tt’s like the dear old Colonel, the new and the old,” the 
Senator sententiously interpreted. 

Beals, overhearing this, added, “It’s poor policy to do 
things that way. Better to pull the old thing down and go 
at it afresh, — you save time and money, and have it right 
in the end.” 

“Tt’s been in the family a hundred years or more,’ some 
one remarked. “The Colonel used to mow this field himself, 
before he took to making hardware.” 

“Tsabelle will pull it about their ears when she gets the 
chance,’ Mrs. Lawton said. “The present-day young 
haven’t much sentiment for uncomfortable souvenirs.” 

Her cousin Margaret was remarking to Vickers, “ What a 
good, homey sort of place, — like our old Virginia houses, — 
all but that great barn!” 

It was, indeed, as the Senator had said, very like the Colonel, 
who could spare neither the old nor the new. It was also like 
him to give Grafton a new stone library and church, and piece 
on rooms here and there to his own house. In spite of 
these additions demanded by comfort there was something 
in the conglomeration to remind the Colonel, who had re- 
turned to Grafton after tasting strife and success in the 
Middle West, of the plain home of his youth. 

“The dear old place!’ Alice Johnston murmured to her 
husband. “It was never more attractive than to-day, as 
if it knew that it was marrying off an only daughter.” To 
her, too, the Farm had memories, and no new villa spread out 
spaciously in Italian, Tudor, or Classic style could ever equal 
this white, four-chimneyed New England mansion. 

On the west slope of the hill near the veranda a large 
tent had been erected, and into this black-coated waiters 
were running excitedly to and fro around a wing of 


TOGETHER 15 


the house which evidently held the servant quarters. Just 
beyond the tent a band was playing a loud march. There 
was to be dancing on the lawn after the breakfast, and in the 
evening on the village green.for everybody, and later fire- 
works. The Colonel had insisted on the dancing and the 
fireworks, in spite of Vickers’s jeers about pagan rites and the 
Fourth of July. 

The bride and groom had already taken their places in the 
broad hall, which bisected the old house. The guests were 
to enter from the south veranda, pass through the hall, and 
after greeting the couple gain the refreshment tent through 
the library windows. The Colonel had worked it all out 
with that wonderful attention to detail that had built up his 
great hardware business. Upstairs in the front bedrooms 
the wedding presents had been arranged, and nicely ticketed 
with cards for the amusement of aged relatives, —a wonderful 
assortment of silver and gold and glass, — an exhibition of 
the wide relationships of the contracting pair, at least of 
the wife. And through these rooms soft-footed detectives 
patrolled, examining the guests... . 

Isabelle Price had not wished her wedding to be of this kind, 
ordered so to speak like the refreshments from Sherry and 
the presents from Tiffany, with a special train on the siding. 
When she and John had decided to be married at the old 
farm, she had thought of a country feast, — her St. Mary’s 
girls of course and one or two more, but quite to them- 
selves! They were to walk with these few friends to the 
little chapel, where the dull old village parson would say 
the necessary words. The marriage over, and a simple 
breakfast in the old house, —the scene of their love, — 
they were to ride off among the hills to her camp on Dog 
Mountain, alone. And thus quietly, without flourish, they 
would enter the new life: But as happens to all such pretty 
idylls, reality had forced her hand. Colonel Price’s daughter 


could not marry like an eloping schoolgirl, so her mother 


had declared. Even John had taken it as a matter of course, 
all this elaborate celebration, the guests, the special train, 


— 


16 TOGETHER 


the overflowing house. And she had yielded her ideal of 
having something special in her wedding, acquiescing in 
the “usual thing.’ 

But now that the first guests began to top the hill and 
enter the hall with warm, laughing greetings, all as gay as 
the June sunlight, the women in their fresh summer gowns, 
she felt the joy of the moment. ‘“Isn’t it jolly, so many 
of ’em!”’ she exclaimed to her husband, squeezing his arm 
gayly. He took it, like most things, as a matter of course. 
The hall soon filled with high tones and noisy laughter, as - 
the guests crowded in from the lawn about the couple, to 
offer their congratulations, to make their little jokes and. 
premeditated speeches. Standing at the foot of the broad 
stairs, her veil thrown back, her fair face flushed with color 
and her lips parted in a smile, one arm about a thick bunch 
of roses, the bride made a bright spot of light in the dark 
hall. All those whirling thoughts, the depths to which her 
spirit had descended during the service, had fled; she was ~ 
excited by this throng of smiling, joking people, by the 
sense of her réle. She had the feeling of its being her 
day, and she was eager to drink every drop in the spar- 
kling cup. A great kindness for everybody, a sort of 
beaming sympathy for the world, bubbled up in her heart, 
making the repeated hand squeeze which she gave — 
sometimes a double pressure —a personal expression of 
‘her emotion. Her flashing hazel eyes, darting into each 
face in turn as it came before her, seemed to say: ‘ Of course, 
I am the happiest woman in the world, and you must be 
happy, too. It is such a good world!’ While her voice 
was repeating again and again, with the same tremulous 
intensity, “Thank you—it is awfully nice of you—lI 
am so glad you are here!”’ 

To the amiable Senator’s much worn compliment, — 
“It’s the prettiest wedding I have seen since your mother’s, 
and the prettiest bride, too,’’— she blushed a pleased reply, 
though she had confessed to John only the night before that 
the sprightly Senator was “horrid, — he has such a way of 


TOGETHER 17 


squeezing your hand, as if he would like to do more,’’ — to 
which the young man had replied in his perplexity, due to 
the Senator’s exalted position in the A. and P. Board, “1 
suppose it’s only the old boy’s way of being cordial.”’ 

Even when Nannie Lawton came loudly with Hollenby — 
she had captured him from her cousin —and threw her 
arms about the bride, Isabelle did not draw back. She 
forgot that she disliked the gay little woman, with her 
muddy eyes, whose “affairs’’ —one after the other — 
were condoned ‘for her husband’s sake.’”? Perhaps Nannie 
felt what it might be to be as happy and proud as she was, — 
she was large, generous, comprehending at this moment. 
And she passed the explosive little woman over to her hus- 
band, who received her with the calm courtesy that never 
made an enemy. : 

But when “her girls” came up the line, she felt happiest. 
Cornelia was first, large, handsome, stately, her broad 
black hat nodding above the feminine stream, her dark 
eyes observing all, while she slowly smiled to the witti- 
cisms Vickers murmured in her ear. Every one glanced 
at Miss Pallanton; she was a figure, as Isabelle realized 
when she finally stood before her, — a very handsome figure, 
and would get her due attention from her world. They 
had not cared very much for ‘‘ Conny ” at St. Mary’s, though 
she was a handsome girl then and. had what was called 
“a good mind.’”’ There was something coarse in the detail 
of this large figure, the plentiful reddish hair, the strong, 
straight nose, — all of which the girls of St. Mary’s had 
interpreted their own way, and also the fact that she 
had come from Duluth, — probably of “ordinary” people. 
Surely not a girl’s girl, nor a woman’s woman! But one 
to be reckoned with when it came to men. Isabelle was 
conscious of her old reserve as she listened to Conny’s piping, 
falsetto voice, —such a funny voice to come from that 
_ large person through that magnificent white throat. 

“Tt makes me so happy, dear Isabelle,’ the voice piped; 
“it is all so ideal, so exactly what it ought to be for you, 

c 


18 TOGETHER 


don’t you know?” And as Percy Woodyard bore her off 
—he had hovered near all the time —she smiled again, 
leaving Isabelle to wonder what Conny thought would be 
“just right”’ for her. 

“You must hurry, Conny, 


” 


she called on over Vickers’s 


head, ‘“‘and make up your mind; you are almost our last!” - 


“You know I never hurry,” the smiling lips piped lan- 
guidly, and the large hat sailed into the library, piloted on 
either side by Woodyard and Vickers. Isabelle had a twinge 
of sisterly jealousy at seeing her younger brother so persis- 
tently in the wake of the large, blond girl. Dear Vick, her 
own chum, her girl’s first ideal of a man, fascinatingly de- 
veloped by his two years in Munich, must not go bobbing 
between Nan Lawton and Conny! 

And here was Margaret Lawton —so different from her 
cousin’s wife —with the delicate, high brow, the firm, 
aristocratic line from temple to chin. She was the rarest 
and best of the St. Mary’s set, and though Isabelle had 
known her at school only a year, she had felt curiosity and 
admiration for the Virginian. Her low, almost drawling 
voice, which reflected a controlled spirit, always soothed 
her. The deep-set blue eyes had caught Isabelle’s glance 
at Vickers, and with an amused smile the Southern girl 
said, “‘He’s in the tide!” 

Isabelle said, ‘‘I am so, so glad you could get here, Mar- 
garet.’”’ 

“T wanted to—very much.- I] made mother put off 
our sailing.”’ 

“ How is the Bishop?” she asked, as Margaret was pushed 
on. 
“Oh, happy, riding about the mountains and converting 
the poor heathen, who prefer whiskey to religion. Mother’s 
taking him to England this summer to show him off to the 
foreign clergy.” 

“And Washington?” 

Margaret’s thin, long lips curved ironically for answer. 
Hollenby, who seemed to have recollected a purpose, was 


TOGETHER 19 


waiting for her at the library door. ... “Ah, my Eros!” 
Isabelle exclaimed with delight, holding forth two hands 
to a small, dark young woman, with waving brown hair and 
large eyes that were fixed on distant objects. 

“Eros with a husband and two children,” Aline Goring 
murmured, in her soft contralto. “ You remember Eugene? 
At the Springs that summer?” The husband, a tall, smooth- 
shaven, young man with glasses and the delicate air of the 
steam-heated American scholar bowed stiffly. 

“Of course! Didn’t I aid and abet you two?” 

“That’s two years and a half ago,’ Aline remarked, as 

» if the simple words covered a multitude of facts about life. 
“We are on our way to St. Louis to settle.” 

“Splendid!” Isabelle exclaimed. “We shall have you 
again. ‘Torso, where we are exiled for the present, is only 
a night’s ride from St. Louis.” 

Aline smiled that slow, warm smile, which seemed to 
come from the remote inner heart of her dreamy life. Isa- 
belle looked at her eagerly, searching for the radiant, woodsy 
creature she had known, that Eros, with her dreamy, pas- 
sionate, romantic temperament, a girl whom girls adored 
and kissed and petted, divining in her the feminine spirit 
of themselves. Surely, she should be happy, Aline, the 
beautiful girl made for love, poetic, tender. The lovely eyes 
were there, but veiled; the velvety skin had roughened; 
and the small body was almost heavy. The wood nymph 
had been submerged in matrimony. 

Goring was saying in a twinkling manner: — 

“T’ve been reckoning up, Mrs. Lane. You are the sev- 
enth most intimate girl friend Aline has married off the last 
two years. How many more of you are there?” 

Aline, putting her arms about the bride’s neck, drew her 
face to her lips and whispered : — 

“Dearie, my darling! I hope you will be so happy, — 
that it will be all you can wish!”’ After these two had disap- 
peared into the library, where there was much commo- 
tion about the punch-bowl, the bride wondered — were 


20 TOGETHER 


they happy? She had seen the engagement at Southern 
Springs, — the two most ecstatic, unearthly lovers she had 
ever known. ... Butnow?... 

Thus the stream of her little world flowed on, repeating 
its high-pitched note of gratulation, of jocular welcome to 


the married state, as if to say, ‘Well, now you are one | 


of us — you’ve been brought in — this is life.’ That was 
what these smiling people were thinking, as they welcomed 
the neophytes to the large vale of human experience. ‘We 
have seen you through this business, started you joyously 
on the common path. And now what will you make of it?’ 
For the occasion they ignored, good naturedly, the stones 
along the road, the mistakes, the miserable failures that 
lined the path, assuming the bride’s proper illusion of tri- 
umph and confidence. ... Among the very last came 
the Johnstons, who had lingered outside while the more 
boisterous ones pressed about the couple. Isabelle noticed 
that the large brown eyes of the placid woman, who always 
seemed to her much older than herself, were moist, and 
her face was serious when she said, “May it be all that 
your heart desires — the Real Thing!” 

A persistent aunt interrupted them here, and it was hours 
afterward when Isabelle’s thought came back to these words 
and dwelt on them. ‘The real thing!’ Of course, that was 
what it was to be, her marriage, — the woman’s symbol of the 
Perfect, not merely Success (though with John they could 
not fail of worldly success), nor humdrum content — but, as 
Alice said, the real thing, —a state of passionate and com- 
. plete union. Something in those misty brown eyes, something 
in the warm, deep voice of the older woman, in the prayer- 
like form of the wish, sank deep into her consciousness. 

She turned to her husband, who was chatting with Fos- 
dick, a large, heavy man with a Dr. Johnson head on massive 
shoulders. One fat hand leaned heavily on a fat club, for 
Fosdick was slightly lame and rolled in his gait. 

“Tsabelle,’’ he remarked with a windy sigh, “I salute my 
victor !” 





TOGETHER 21 


Old Dick, Vickers’s playmate in the boy-and-girl days, 
her playmate, too, — he had wanted to marry her for years, 
ever since Vick’s freshman year when he had made them a 
visit at the Farm. He had grown very heavy since then,— 
time which he had spent roving about in odd corners of 
the earth. As he stood there, his head bent. mockingly 
before the two, Isabelle felt herself Queen once more, the— 
American woman who, having surveyed all, and dominated 
all within the compass of her little world, has chosen the 
One. But not Dickie, humorous and charming as he was. 

“How goes it, Dickie?” 

“As always,” he puffed; “I come from walking or rather 
limping up and down this weary earth and observing — 
men and women — how they go about to make themselves 
miserable.” 

“Stuff!” 

“My dear friends,’”’ he continued, placing both hands on 
the big cane, “you are about to undergo a new and wonder- 
ful experience. You haven’t the slightest conception of 
what it is. You think it is love; but it is the holy state 
of matrimony, —a very different proposition —’’ 

They interrupted him with laughing abuse, but he persisted, 
—a serious undertone to his banter. ‘ Yes, I have always 
observed the scepticism of youth, no matter what may be the 
age of the contracting parties and their previous experience, 
in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct 
and entirely independent states of being, — one is the crea- 
tion of God, the other of Society. I have observed that 
few make them coalesce.” 

As relatives again interposed, Fosdick rolled off, ostenta- 
tiously thumping his stick on the floor, and made straight 
for the punch-bowl, where he seemed to meet congenial 
company. 


CHAPTER III 


MEANWHILE inside the great tent the commotion was at 
its height, most of the guests — those who had escaped the 
fascination of the punch-bowl — having found their way 
thither. Perspiring waiters rushed back and forth with 
salad and champagne bottles, which were seized by the 
men and borne off to the women waiting suitably to be 
fed by the men whom they had attached. Near the en- 
trance the Colonel, with his old friends Beals and Senator 
Thomas, was surveying the breakfast scene, a contented 
smile on his kind face, as he murmured assentingly, “So — 
so.’ He and the Senator had served in the same regiment 
during the War, Price retiring as Colonel and the Senator as 
Captain; while the bridegroom’s father, Tyringham Lane, 
had been the regimental surgeon. 

“What a good fellow Tyringham was, and how he would 
have liked to be here!” the Senator was saying sentimen- 
tally, as he held out a glass to be refilled. “ Poor fellow ! — 
he never got much out of his life; didn’t know how to make 
the.-most of things,— went out there to that lowa prairie 
after the War. You say he left his widow badly off?” 

The Colonel nodded, and added with pride, “But 
John has made that right now.” ai 

The Senator, who had settled in Indianapolis and prac- 
tised railroad law until his clients had elevated him to the 
Senate, considered complacently the various dispensations 
of Providence towards men. He said generously: — 

“Well, Tyringham’s son has good blood, and it will tell. 
He will make his way. We’ll see to that, eh, Beals?” and 
the Senator sauntered over to a livelier group dominated by 
Cornelia Pallanton’s waving black plumes. 

22 


TOGETHER 23 


“Oh, marriage!’’ Conny chaffed, “it’s the easiest thing 
a woman can do, isn’t it? Why should one be in a hurry 
when it’s so hard to go back?” 

“Matrimony,”’ Fosdick remarked, “is an experiment where 
nobody’s experience counts but your own.’”’ He had been 
torn from the punch-bowl and thus returned to his previous 
train of thought. 

“Ts that why some repeat it so often ?’’ Elsie Beals inquired. 
She had broken her engagement the previous winter and 
had spent the summer hunting with Indian guides among 
the Canadian Rockies. She regarded herself as unusual, 
and turned sympathetically to Fosdick, who also had a 
reputation for being odd. 

“So let us eat and be merry,” that young man said, seizing 
a paté and glass of champagne, “though I never could see 
why good people should make such an unholy rumpus when 
two poor souls decide to attempt the great experiment of 
converting illusion into reality.” 

“Some succeed,” an earnest young man suggested. 

Conny, who had turned from the constant Woodyard to 
the voluble fat man, who might be a Somebody, remarked :— 

“T suppose you don’t see the puddles when you are in 
their condition. It’s always the belief that we are going 
to escape ’em that drives us all into your arms.” 

“What I object to,’’ Fosdick persisted, feeding himself 
prodigiously, “is not the fact, but this savage glee over it. 
It’s as though a lot of caged animals set up a how! of delight 
every time the cage door was opened and a new pair was 
introduced into the pen. They ought to perform the wed- 
ding ceremony in sackcloth and ashes, after duly fasting, 
accompanied by a few faithful friends garbed in black with 
torches.” 

Conny gave him a cold, surface smile, setting down his 
talk as “young” and beamed at the approaching Senator. 

“Oh, what an idea!” giggled a little woman. “If you can’t 
dance at your own wedding, you may never have another 
chance.” 


24 TOGETHER 


Conny, though intent upon the Senator, kept an eye 
upon Woodyard, introducing him to the distinguished 
man, thinking, no doubt, that the Chairman of the A. and P. 
Board might be useful to the young lawyer. For whatever 
she might be to women, this large blond creature with 
white neck, voluptuous lips, and slow gaze from childlike 
eyes had the power of drawing males to her, a power despised 
and also envied by women. Those simple eyes seemed always 
to seek information about obvious matters. But behind 
the eyes Conny was thinking, ‘It’s rather queer, this crowd. 
And these Prices with all their money might do so much 
better. That Fosdick is a silly fellow. The Senator is worn 
of course, but still important!’ And yet Conny, with 
all her sureness, did not know all her own mental pro- 
cesses. For she, too, was really looking for a mate, weigh- 
ing, estimating men to that end, and some day she would 
come to a conclusion, —would take a man, Woodyard or 
another, giving him her very®handsome person, and her 
intelligence, in exchange for certain definite powers of brain 
and will. 

The bride and groom entered the tent at last. Isabelle, 
in a renewed glow of triumph, stepped over to the table 
and with her husband’s assistance plunged a knife into the 
huge cake, while her health was being drunk with cheers. 
As she firmly cut out a tiny piece, she exposed a thin but 
beautifully moulded arm. 

“Handsome girl,’ the Senator murmured in Conny’s ear. 
“Must be some sore hearts here to-day. I don’t see how 
such a beauty could escape until she was twenty-six. But 
girls want their fling these days, same as the men!” 

“Toast! Toast the bride!’’ came voices from all sides, 
while the waiters hurried here and there slopping the wine 
into empty glasses. 


As the bride left the tent to get ready for departure, she — 


caught sight of Margaret Lawton in a corner of the veranda 
with Hollenby, who was bending towards her, his eyes 
fastened on her face. Margaret was looking far away, across 


TOGETHER 25 


the fields to where Dog Mountain rose in the summer haze. 
Was Margaret deciding her fate at this moment, — attracted, 
repulsed, waiting for the deciding thrill, while her eyes 
searched for the ideal of happiness on the distant mountain ? 
She turned to look at the man, drawing back as his hand 
reached forward. So little, so much — woman’s fate was 
in the making this June day, all about the old house, — 
attracting, repulsing, weighing, — unconsciously moulding 
destiny that might easily be momentous in the outcome 
of the years. ... 

When the bride came down, a few couples had already 
begun to dance, but they followed the other guests to the 
north side where the carriage stood ready. Isabelle looked 
very smart in her new gown, a round travelling hat just 
framing her brilliant eyes and dark hair. Mrs. Price followed 
her daughter closely, her brows puckered in nervous fear 
lest something should be forgotten. .She was especially 
anxious about a certain small bag, and had the maid take 
out all the hand luggage to make sure it had not been mis- 
laid. 

Some of the younger ones led by Vickers pelted the 
couple with rice, while this delay occurred. It was a 
silly custom that they felt bound to follow. There was 
no longer any meaning in the symbol of fertility. Multiply 
and be fruitful, the Bible might urge, following an ancient 
economic ideal of happiness. But the end of marriage 
no longer being this gross purpose, the sterile woman has at 
last come into honor! .. . 

The bride was busy kissing a group of young women 
who had clustered about her, — Elsie Beals, Aline, Alice 
Johnston, Conny. Avoiding Nannie Lawton’s wide open 
arms,’ she jumped laughingly into the carriage, then turned 
for a last kiss from the Colonel. 

“Here, out with you Joe,” Vickers exclaimed to the 
coachman. “TI’ll drive them down to the station. Quick 
now, — they mustn’t lose the express!”’ 

_ He bundled the old man from the seat, gathered up the 


26 TOGETHER 


reins with a flourish, and whipped the fresh horses. The 
bride’s last look, as the carriage shot through the bunch 
of oleanders at the gate, gathered in the group of waving, 
gesticulating men and women, and above them on the steps 
the Colonel, with his sweet, half-humorous smile, her 
mother at his side, already greatly relieved, and behind 
all the serious face of Alice Johnston, the one who knew 
the mysteries both tender and harsh, and who could still 
eall it all good! . 

Vickers peated | them to the station in a sida soothing 
his excitement by driving diabolically, cutting corners and 
speeding down hill. At the platform President Beals’s own 
car was standing ready for them, the two porters at the 
steps. The engine of the special was to take them to 
the junction where the “ Bellefleur’’ would be attached 
to the night express, —a special favor for the President 
of the A. and P. The Senator had insisted on their having 
his camp in the Adirondacks for a month. Isabelle would 
have preferred her own little log hut in the firs of Dog Moun- 
tain, which she and Vickers had built. There they could 
be really quite alone, forced to care for themselves. But 
the Colonel could not understand her bit of sentiment, and 
John thought they ought not to offend the amiable Senator, 
who had shown himself distinctly friendly. So they were 
to enter upon their new life enjoying these luxuries of 
powerful friends. 

The porters made haste to put the bags in the car, and 
the engine snorted. 

“Good-by, Mr. Gerrish,” Isabelle called to the station 
agent, who was watching them at a respectful distance. 
Suddenly he seemed to be an old friend, a part of all that 
she was leaving behind. 

“Good-by, Miss Price — Mrs. Lane,” _ he called back. 
“Good luck to you!” 

“Dear old Vick,’’ Isabelle murmured caressingly, “I 
hate most to leave you behind.” 

“Better stay, then, —it isn’t too late,’”’ he joked. ‘“We 


TOGETHER 27 


could elope with the ponies, — you always said you would 
run off with me!” 

She hugged him more tightly, burying her head in his 
neck, shaking him gently. ‘Dear old Vick! Don’t be a 
fool! And be good to Dad, won’t you?” 

“Vil try not to abuse him.” 

“You know what I mean — about staying over for the 
summer. Oh dear, dear!’’ There was a queer sob in her 
voice, as if now for the first time she knew what it was. 
The old life was all over. Vick had been so much of that! 
And she had seen little or nothing of him since his return 
from Europe, so absorbed had she been in the bustle of her 
marriage. Up there on Dog Mountain which swam in the 
haze of the June afternoon they had walked on snowshoes 
one cold January night, over the new snow by moonlight, 
talking marvellously of all that life was to be. She believed 
then that she should never marry, but remain always Vick’s 
comrade, —to guide him, to share his triumphs. Now she 
was abandoning that child’s plan. She shook with nervous 
sobs. 

“The engineer says we must start, dear,’’ Lane suggested. 
“We have only just time to make the connection.” 

Vickers untwisted his sister’s arms from his neck and placed 
them gently in her husband’s hands. 

“Good-by, girl,” he called. 

Sinking into a chair near the open door, Isabelle gazed 
back at the hills of Grafton until the car plunged into a cut. 
She gave a long sigh. ‘“We’re off!” her husband said 
joyously. He was standing beside her, one hand resting 
on her shoulder. | 

“Yes, dear!’”’ She took his strong, muscled hand in 
hers. But when he tried to draw her to him, she shrank 
back involuntarily, startled, and looked at him with wide- 
open eyes as if she would read Destiny in him, — the Man, 
her husband. 

For this was marriage, not the pantomime they had lived 

through all that day. That was demanded by custom; 


28 TOGETHER 


but now, alone with this man, his eyes alight with love 
and desire, his lips caressing her hair, his hands drawing 
her to him, —this was marriage! 

Her eyes closed as if to shut out his face, —‘‘ Don’t, don’t !” 
she murmured vaguely. Suddenly she started to her feet, 
her eyes wide open, and she held him away from her, looking 
into him, looking deep into his soul. 


CHAPTER IV 


Ir was a hot, close night. After the Bellefleur had been 
coupled to the Western express at the junction, Lane had 
the porters make up a bed for Isabelle on the floor of the 
little parlor next the observation platform, and here at the 
rear of the long train, with the door open, she lay sleepless 
through the night hours, listening to the rattle of the trucks, 
the thud of heavy wheels on the rails, disturbed only when 
the car was shifted to the Adirondack train by the blue 
glare of arc lights and phantom figures rushing to and fro 
in the pallid night. 

The excitement of the day had utterly exhausted her; 
but her mind was extraordinarily alive with impressions, — 
faces and pictures from this great day of her existence, 
her marriage. And out of all these crowding images emerged 
persistently certain ones, — Aline, with the bloom almost 
gone, the worn air of something carelessly used. That 
was due to the children, to cares, —the Gorings were poor 
and the two years abroad must have been a strain. All the 
girls at St. Mary’s had thought that marriage ideal, made 
all of love. For there was something of the poet in Eugene 
Goring, the slim scholar, walking with raised head and speak- 
ing with melodious voice. He was a girl’s ideal... . And 
then came Nan Lawton, with her jesting tone, and sly, half- 
shut eyes. Isabelle remembered how brilliant Nan’s mar- 
riage was, how proud she herself had been to have a part 
_ init. Nan’s face was blotted by Alice Johnston’s with her 
’ phlegmatic husband. She was happy, serene, but old and 
acquainted with care. 

Why should she think of them, of any other marriage? 
Hers was to be different, — oh, yes, quite exceptional and 

29 


30 TOGETHER 


perfect, with an intimacy, a mutual helpfulness... . 
The girls at St. Mary’s had all had their emotional experi- 
ences, which they confessed to one another; and she had 
had hers, of course, like her affair with Fosdick; but so 
innocent, so merely kittenish that they had almost dis- 
appeared from memory. These girls at St. Mary’s read 
poetry, and had dreams of heroes, in the form of football 
players. They all thought about marriage, coming as they 
did from well-to-do parents, whose daughters might be 
expected to marry. Marriage, men, position in the world, 
—all that was their proper inheritance. 

After St. Mary’s there had been two winters in St. Louis, — 
her first real dinners and parties, her first real men. Then 
a brief season in Washington as Senator Thomas’s guest, 
where the horizon, especially the man part of it, had con- 
siderably widened. She had made a fair success in Washing- 
ton, thanks to her fresh beauty and spirit, and also, she was 
frank to confess, thanks to the Senator’s interest and the 
reputation of her father’s wealth. Then had come a six 
months with her mother and Vickers in Europe, from which 
she returned abruptly to get engaged, to begin life seriously. 

These experimental years had seemed to her full of radiant 
avenues, any one of which she was free to enter, and for a while 
she had gone joyously on, discovering new avenues, pleasing 
herself with trying them all imaginatively. At the head of — 
all these avenues had stood a man, of course. She could 
recall them all: the one in St. Louis who had followed her 
to Washington, up the Nile, would not be turned away. 
Once he had touched her, taken her hand, and she had felt. 
cold, —she knew that his was not her way. In Washington 
there had been a brilliant congressman whom the Senator 
approved of, —an older man. She had given him some 
weeks of puzzled deliberation, then rejected him, as she 
considered sagely, because he spoke only to her mind. Per- 
haps the most dangerous had been the Austrian whom she 
had met in Rome. She almost yielded there; but once 
when they were alone together she had caught sight of depths 


TOGETHER 3] 


in him, behind his black eyes and smiling lips, that made 
her afraid, —deep differences of race. The Prices were 
- American in en old-fashioned, clean, plain sense. So when 
he persisted, she made her mother engage passage for home 
and fied with the feeling that she must put an ocean be- 
tween herself and this man, fled to the arms of the man 
she was to marry, who somehow in the midst of his busy 
life managed to meet her in New York. 
- But why him? Out of all these avenues, her possibilities 
of various fate, why had she chosen him, the least promising 
outwardly? Was it done in a mood of reaction against 
the other men who had sought her? He was most unlike 
them all, with a background of hard struggle, with limita- 
tions instead of privileges such as they had. The Colonel’s 
daughter could understand John Lane’s persistent force, — 
patient, quiet, sure. She remembered his sny, inexperienced 
face when her father first brought him to the house for dinner. 
She had thought little of him then, — the Colonel was always 
bringing home some rough diamond, — but he had silently 
absorbed her as he did everything in his path, and selected 
her, so to speak, as he selected whatever he wanted. And 
after that whenever she came back to her father’s home from 
her little expeditions into the world, he was always there, 
! and she came to know that he wanted her, — was waiting 
‘until his moment should come. It came. 

Never since then had she had a regret for those possi- 
bilities that had been hers, —fcr those other men standing 
at the other avenues and inviting her. From the moment 
‘that his arms had held her, she knew that he was the best, — 
so much stronger, finer, simpler than any other. She was 
proud that she had been able to divine this quality and could 
prefer real things to sham. During the engagement months 
she had learned, bit by bit, the story of his struggle, what 
had been denied to him of comfort and advantage, what 
he had done for himself and for his mother. She yearned 
to give him what he had never had, — pleasure, joy, the 
soft suavities of life, what she had had always. 


32 TOGETHER 


Now she was his! Her wandering thoughts came back 
to that central fact. 

Half frightened, she drew the blanket about her shoulders 
and listened.. He had been so considerate of her, —had 
left her here to rest after making sure of her comfort and 
gone forward to the stuffy stateroom to sleep, divining that 
she was not yet ready to accept him; that if he took her 
now, he should violate something precious in her, — that 
she was not fully won. She realized this delicate instinct 
and was grateful to him. Of course she was his, — only 
his; all the other avenues had been closed forever by her 
love for him, her marriage to him. Ah, that should be 
wonderful for them both, all the years that were to come! 
Nevertheless, here on the threshold, her wayward soul had 
paused the merest moment to consider those other avenues, 
what they might have offered of experience, of knowledge, 
had she taken any other one of them. Were she here with 
another than him, destiny, her inmost self, the whole world 
of being would be changed, would be other than it was to 
be! What was that mysterious power that settled fate on 
its grooves? What were those other lives within her soul 
never to be lived, the lives she might have lived? Bewil- 
dered, weary, she stretched out her arms dreamily to life, 
and with parted lips sank into slumber... . 

The sun was streaming through the open door; the train 
had come to a halt. Isabelle awoke with a start, afraid. 
Her husband was bending over her and she stared up directly 
into his amused eyes, looked steadily at him, remembering 
now all that she had thought the night before. This was 
her avenue —this was he ... yet she closed her eyes as 
he bent still nearer to kiss her neck, her temples, her lips. 
Like a frightened child she drew the clothes close about her, 
and turned from his eager embraces. Beyond his face she 
saw a line of straight, stiff firs beside the track, and the 
blue foot-hills through which the train was winding its 
way upwards to the mountains. She stretched herself 
sleepily, murmuring: — 


TOGETHER ‘ 33 


“Dear, I’m so tired! Is it late?” 

“Ten o’clock. We’re due in half an hour. I had to 
wake you.” 

“In half an hour!” She fled to the dressing-room, put- 
ting him off with a fleeting kiss. 

One of the Senator’s guides met them at the station with 
a buckboard. All the way driving upwards through the 
woods to the camp they were very gay. It was like one of 
those excursions she used to take with Vickers when he 
was in his best, most expansive mood, alternately chaffing 
and petting her. Lane was in high spirits, throwing off 
completely that sober self which made him so weighty in 
his world, revealing an unexpected boyishness. He joked 
with the guide, talked fishing and shooting. With the 
deep breaths of mountain air he expanded, his eyes flashing 
a new fire of joy at sight of the woods and streams. Once 
when they stopped to water the horses he seized the drinking- 
cup.and dashed up the slope to a spring hidden among the 
trees. He brought back a brimming cupful of cold water, 
which she emptied. Then with a boyish, chivalrous smile 
he put his lips to the spot where she had drunk and drained 
the last drop. “That’s enough for me!” he said, and they 
laughed self-consciously. His homage seemed to say that 
thus through life he would be content with what she left 
him to drink, —absurd fancy, but at this moment alto- 
gether delightful. ... Later she rested, pillowing her 
head on his shoulder, covered by his coat, while the trap 
jolted on through the woods between high hills. Now and 
then he touched her face with the tips of his strong fingers, 
brushing away the wandering threads of hair. Very peace- 
ful, happy, feeling that it was all as she would have wished 
it, she shut her eyes, content to rest on this comrade, so 
strong and so gentle. Life would be like this, always. 

The Senator’s camp was a camp only in name, of course; 
in fact it was an elaborate and expensive rustic establish- 
ment on a steep bluff above a little mountain lake. The 
Japanese cook had prepared a rich dinner, and the cham- 

D 


34 TOGETHER 


pagne was properly iced. The couple tiptoed about the 
place, looking at each other in some dismay, and John 
readily fell in with her suggestion that they should try sleep- 
ing in the open, with a rough shelter of boughs, — should 
make their first nest for themselves. The guide took them 
to a spot some distance up the lake and helped them cut 
the fir boughs, all but those for the bed, which they insisted 
upon gathering for themselves. After bringing up the 
blankets and the bags he paddled back to the camp, leaving 
them to themselves in the solitude of the woods, under the 
black, star-strewn sky. 

Alone with him thus beside their little fire her heart was 
full of dream and content, of peace and love. They two 
seemed to have come up out of the world to some higher 
level of life. After the joyous day this solitude of the deep 
forest was perfect. When the fire had died down to the 
embers, he circled her with his arms and kissed her. Although 
her body yielded to his strong embrace her lips were cold, 
hard, and her eyes answered his passion with a*strange, 
aloof look, as if her soul waited in fear. ... She knew 
what marriage was to be, although she had never listened 
to the allusions whispered among married women and more 
experienced girls. Something in the sex side of the rela- 
tions between men and women had always made her shrink. 
She was not so much pure in body and soul, as without 
sex, unborn. She knew the fact of nature, the eternal law 
of life repeating itself through desire and passion; but she 


et 


realized it remotely, only in her mind, as some necessary — 
physiological mechanism of living, like perspiration, fatigue, — 


hunger. But it had not spoken in her body, in her soul; 
she did not feel that it ever could speak to her as it was 
speaking in the man’s lighted eyes, in his lips. So now as 
always she was cold, tranquil beneath her lover’s kisses. 
And later on their bed of boughs, with her husband’s 
arms about her, his heart throbbing against her breast, his 
warm breath covering her neck, she lay still, very still, — 
aloof, fearful of this mystery to be revealed, a little weary, 


nee, 


TOGETHER 35 


wishing that she were back once more in the car or in her 
own room at the Farm, for this night, to return on the 
morrow to her comrade for another joyous, free day. 

“My love! ... Come to me!... I love you, love 
nig 620 Oca nanan 

The passionate tone beat against her ears, yet roused no 
thrilling response. The trembling voice, the intensity of 
the worn old words coming from him, — it was all like an- 
other man suddenly appearing in the guise of one she thought 
she knew so well! The taut muscles of his powerful arm 
pressing against her troubled her. She would have fled, — 
why could one be like this! Still she caressed his face and 
hair, kissing him gently. Oh, yes, she loved him,—she was 
his! He was her husband. Nevertheless she could not 
meet him wholly in this inmost intimacy, and her heart 
was troubled. If he could be content to be her companion, 
her lover! But this other thing was the male, the something 
which made all men differ from all women in the crisis of 
emotion —so she supposed — and must be endured. She 
lay passive in his arms, less yielding than merely acquiescent, 
drawn in upon herself to something smaller than she was 
before. ... 3 

When he slept at her side, his head pillowed close to hers 
on the fragrant fir, she still lay awake, her eyes staring up 
at the golden stars, still fearful, uncomprehending. At 
last she was his, as he would have her, —wholly his, so 
she said, seeking comfort, — and thus kissing his brow, with a 
long, wondering sigh she fell asleep by his side. 

In the morning they dipped into the cold black lake, and 
as they paddled back to the camp for breakfast while the 
first rays of the warm sun shone through the firs in gold 
bars, she felt like herself once more, —a companion ready 
for a frolic. The next morning Lane insisted on cooking 
their breakfast, for he was a competent woodsman. She 
admired the deft way in which he built his little fire and 
toasted the bacon. In the undress of the woods he showed 
at his best, — self-reliant, capable. There followed a month , 


sf 


36 TOGETHER 


of lovely days which they spent together from sunrise ta 
starlight, walking, fishing, canoeing, swimming,—days of 
fine companionship when they learned the human quality 
in each other. He was strong, buoyant, perfectly sure of 
himself. No emergency could arise where he would be 
found wanting in the man’s part. The man in him she 
admired, — it was what first had attracted her, — was proud 
of it, just as he was proud of her lithe figure, her beauty, 
her gayety, and her little air of worldliness. She began to 
assume that this was all of marriage, at least the essential 
part of it, and that the other, the passionate desire, was 
something desired by the man and to be avoided by the 
woman. 

They liked their guide, one of those American gypsies, 
half poacher, half farmer. He kept a wife and family in a 
shack at the foot of the lake, and Isabelle, with a woman’s 
need for the natural order of life, sought out and made 
friends with the wild little brood. The woman had been a 
mill-hand, discovered by the woodsman on a chance visit to 
the town where she worked, and made his wife, his woman. 
Not yet thirty, she had had eight children, and another was 
coming. Freckled, with a few wisps of thin blond hair, 
her front teeth imperfect, she was an untidy, bedraggled 
object, used and prematurely aged. Nevertheless the guide 
seemed attached to her, and when on a Sunday the family 
went down to the settlement, following the trail through 
the camp, Isabelle could see him help the woman at the 
wire fence, carrying on one arm the youngest child, trailing 
his gun in the other hand. 

“He must care for her!’’ Isabelle remarked. 

“Why, of course. Why not?” her husband asked. 

“But think —” It was all she could say, not knowing 
how to put into words the mournful feeling this woman 
with her brood of young gave her. What joy, what life 
for herself could such a creature have? Isabelle, her imagi- 
nation full of comfortable houses with little dinner parties, 
pretty furniture, books, theatres, charity committees, — 


a 


TOGETHER 37 


all that she conceived made up a properly married young 
woman’s life, — could not understand the existence of the 
guide’s wife. She was merely the man’s woman, a creature 
to give him children, to cook the food, to keep the fire going. 
He had the woods, the wild things he hunted; he had, too, 
his time of drink and rioting; but she was merely his drudge 
and the instrument of his animal passion. Well, civilization 
had put a few milestones between herself and Molly Sewall! 
In the years to come her mind would revert often to this family 
as she saw it filing down the path to the settlement, the half- 
clothed children peeping shyly at her, the woman trailing 
an old shawl from her bent shoulders, the man striding on 
ahead with his gun and his youngest baby, careless so long 
as there was a fire, a bit of food, and the forest to roam 
Liga 

So passed these days of their honeymoon, each one per- 
fect, except for the occasional disquieting presence of pas- 
sion, of unappeasable desire in the man. This male fire 
was as mysterious, as inexplicable to her as that first night, 
— something to be endured forgivingly, but feared, almost 
hated for its fierce invasion of her. If her husband could 
only take her as companion, — the deep, deep friend, the 
first and best for the long journey of life! Perhaps some 
day that would content him; perhaps this flower of passion 
came only at first, to be subdued by the work of life. She 
never dreamed that some day she herself might change, 
might be waked by passion. And yet she knew that she loved 
her husband, yearned to give him all that he desired. Tak- 
ing his face between her hands, she would kiss it gently, 
tenderly, as a mother might kiss a hot, impulsive child 
trying to still a restless spirit within. 

This mystery of passion! It swept over the man, trans- 
figuring him as the summer storm swept across the little 
lake, blackening the sky with shadows through which the 
lightning played fearsomely. She saw this face hot with 
desire of her, as the face of a stranger, — another one than 
the strong, self-contained man she had married, —a face 


* 


38 TOGETHER 


with strange animal and spiritual depths in it, all mixed 
and vivified. It was the brute, she said to herself, and 
feared. Brute and God lie close together; but she could 
not see the God, —felt only the fury of the brute. 

Like the storm it passed off, leaving him as she loved 
him, her tender and worshipping husband. It never entered 
her thought that she might love any man more than she 
loved, him, that perhaps some day she would long for a 
passion to meet her own heart. She saw now no lack in 
her cold limbs, her hard lips, her passionless eyes. She 
was still Diana, —long, shapely, muscular. In her heart 
she loved this Diana self, so aloof from desire! 

The last night of their stay in the mountains she revolved 
all these things in her mind as they lay side by side on their 
fir couch, he asleep in a deep, dreamless fatigue, she alert 
and tense after the long day in the spirituous air, the night 
wind sighing to her from the upper branches of the firs. 
To-morrow they would start for the West, to begin the prose 
of life. Suddenly a thought flashed over her that stopped 
the beat of her pulse, —she might already have conceived! 
She did not wish to escape having children, at least one or 
two; she knew that it was to be expected, that it was 4 
sary and good. He would want his child and she 
and her father and mother would be made happy by childgen. 
But her heart said,—not yet, already. Something in 
which her part had been so slight! She felt the injustice 
of Nature that let conception come to a woman indiffer- 
ently, merely of desire in man and acquiescence in woman. 
How could that be! How could woman conceive so blindly ? 
The child should be got with joy, should flower from a sub- 
lime moment of perfect union when the man and the woman 
were lifted out of themselves to some divine pinnacle of 
experience, of soul and body union and self-effacement. 
Then conception would be but the carrying over of their 
deep yearning, each for the other, the hunger of souls and 
bodies to create. 

Now she saw that it could be other as perhaps with 





TOGETHER ) 39 


her this very moment: that Nature took the seed, however 
it might fall,and nourished it wherever it fell, and made of 
it, regardless of human will, the New Life, —heedless of 
the emotion of the two that were concerned in the process. 
For the first time she saw that pitiless, indifferent face of 
Nature, intent only on the Result, the thing created, scorn- 
ing the spiritual travail of the creator, ignoring any great 
revelation of the man and the woman that would seem to 
count for so much in this process of life-making. Thus 
a drunken beast might beget his child in the body of a loath- 
ing woman, blind souls sowing life blindly for a blind future. 

The idea clutched her like fear: she would defy this fate 
that would use her like any other piece of matrix, merely 
to bear the seed and nourish it for a certain period of its 
way, one small step in the long process. Her heart demanded 
more than a passive part in the order of Nature. Her soul 
needed its share from the first moment of conception in 
making that which she was to give to the race. Some day 
a doctor would explain to her that she was but the soil on 
which the fertile germ grew like a vegetable, without her-will, 
her consent, her creating soul! But she would reject that 
interpretation, — the very blasphemy of love. 
| here, at this point, as she lay in the dark beneath 
thé sighing firs, it dawned in her dimly that something was 
wanting in her marriage, in the union with the man she had 
chosen. She had taken him of her own free choice; she 
was willingly his; she would bear his children if they came. 
Her body and her soul were committed to him by choice, 
and by that ceremony of marriage before the people in 
the chapel, —to take her part with him in the endless pro- 
cess of Fate, the continuance of life. 

Nevertheless, lying there in full contemplation of this 
“new life that might already be putting its clutch upon her 
life, to suck from her its own being, she rebelled at itgall. 
Her heart cried for her part, her very own, for that mysteri- 
ous exaltation that should make her really one with the 
father in the act of creation, in the fulfilment of Love. And 





40 TOGETHER 


somehow she knew assuredly that this could not be, not 
with this man by her side, not with her husband. .. . 

She turned to him, pillowed there at her side, one hand 
resting fondly on her arm. Her eyes stared at him through 
the darkness, trying to read the familiar features. Did he, 
too, know this? Did he feel that it was impossible ever 
to be really one with her? Did he suspect the terrible 
defeat she was suffering now? A tear dropped from her 
eye and fell on the upturned face of the sleeper. He moved, 
murmured, ‘dearest,’ and settled back into his deep 
sleep, taking his hand from her arm. With a little cry she 
fell on him and kissed him, asking his forgiveness’ for the 
mistake between them. She put her head close to his, her 
lips to his lips; for she was his and yet not his, —a 
strange division separating them, a cleavage between their 
bodies and their souls. 

“Why did we not know?” something whispered within. 
But she answered herself more calmly, — “It will all come 
right in the end —it must come right —for his sake!” 


CHAPTER V 


WHEN young John Lane first came to St. Louis to work 
as a clerk in the traffic department of the Atlantic and 
Pacific, he had called on Colonel Price at his office, a dingy 
little room in the corner of the second story of the old brick 
building which had housed the wholesale hardware business 
of Parrott and Price for a generation. The old merchant 
had received the young man with the pleasant kindliness 
that kept‘ his three hundred employees always devoted to 
him. 

“T knew your father, sir!” he said, half-closing his eyes 
and leaning back in his padded old office chair. “Let me 
see —it was in sixty-two in camp before Vicksburg. I 
went to consult him about a boil on my leg. It was a bad 
boil,—it hurt me. ... Your father was a fine man — 
What are you doing in St. Louis?” he concluded abruptly, 
looking out of his shrewd blue eyes at the fresh-colored young 
man whose strong hands gripped squarely the arms of his 
chair. 

And from that day Lane knew that the Colonel never 
lost sight of him. When his chance came, as in time it 
did come through one of the mutations of the great corpora- 
tion, he suspected that the old hardware merchant, who 
was a close friend of the chief men in the road, had spoken 
the needed word to lift the clerk out of the rut. At any 
rate the Colonel had not forgotten the son of Tyringham 
Lane, and the young man had often been to the generous, 
ugly Victorian house, — built when the hardware business 
made its first success. 

Nevertheless, when three years later John Lane made 
another afternoon visit to that dingy office in the Parrott 

41 


42 TOGETHER 


and Price establishment, his hands trembed nervously 
as he sat waiting while the Colonel scrawled his a 
to several papers. 

“Well, John!” the old man remarked finally, earings 
the papers towards the waiting stenographer. “ How’s 
railroadin’ these days ?”’ 

“All right,’? Lane answered buoyantly. “They have 
transferred me to the Indiana division, headquarters at 
‘Torso — superintendent of the Torso and Toledo.” 

“Indeed! But you’ll be back here some day, eh?” 

“T hope so!”’ 

“That’s good!’’. The Colonel smiled sympathetically, as 
he always did when he contemplated energetic youth, 
climbing the long ladder with a firm grip on each rung. 

“T came to see you about another matter,” Lane began 
hesitantly. 

“ Anything I can do for you?” 

“Yes, sir; I want to marry your daughter, —and I’d 
like you to know it.”’ 

The old merchant’s face. became suddenly grave, the 
twinkle disappearing from his blue eyes. He listened 
thoughtfully while the young man explained himself. He 
was still a poor man, of course; his future was to be made. - 
But he did not intend to remain poor. His salary was not 
much to offer a girl like the Colonel’s daughter; but it would 
go far in Torso — and it was the first step. Finally he was 
silent, well aware that there was small possibility that he 
should ever be a rich man, as Colonel Price was, and that it 
was presumptuous of him to seek to marry his daughter, 
and therefore open to mean interpretation. But he felt 
that the Colonel was not one to impute low motives. He 
knew the very real democracy of the successful merchant, 
who never had forgotten his own story. 

“What does Belle say ?”’ the Colonel asked. 

“T should not have come here if I didn’t think —” the 
young man laughed. 

“Of course !”’ 


TOGETHER 45 


of the little city, near the new country club. Mrs. Price 
spent an exciting three months running back and forth 
between New York, St. Louis, and Torso furnishing the new 
home. Isabelle’s liberal allowance was to continue indefi- 
nitely, and beyond this the Colonel promised nothing, now 
or later; nor would Lane have accepted more from his hand. 
It was to the Torso house that the Lanes went immediately 
after their month in the Adirondacks. 


Torso, Indiana, is one of those towns in the Mississippi 
Valley which makes more impression the farther from New 
York one travels. New York has never heard of it, except 
as it appears occasionally on a hotel register among other 
queer places that Americans confess to as home. At Pitts- 
burg it is a round black spot on the map, in the main ganglia 
of the great A. and P. and the junction point of two other 
railroads. At Cincinnati it is a commercial centre of con- 
siderable importance, almost a rival. While Torso to Torso 
is the coming pivot of the universe. 

It is an old settlement—some families with French 
names still own the large distilleries — on the clay banks of 
a sluggish creek in the southern part of the state, and there 
are many Kentuckians in its population. Nourished by rail- 
roads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., near 
the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, © 
a carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, 
Torso is a black smudge in a flat green landscape from which 
many lines of electric railway radiate forth along the country 
roads. And along the same roads across the reaches of 
prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing 
many fine wires glistening in the sunlight and singing the 
importance of Torso to the world at large. © 

The Lanes arrived at night, and to Isabelle the prairie 
heavens seemed dark and far away, the long broad streets 
with their bushy maple trees empty, and the air filled with 
hoarse plaints, the rumbling speech of the railroad. She 
was homesick and fearful, as they mounted the steps to the 


+ 


46 TOGETHER 


new house and pushed open the shining oak door that stuck 
and smelled of varnish. The next morning Lane whisked 
off on a trolley to the A. and P. offices, while Isabelle walked 
around the house, which faced the main northern artery of 
Torso. From the western veranda she could see the roof 
of the new country club through a ragged group of trees. 
On the other side were dotted the ample houses of Torso 
aristocracy, similar to hers, as she knew, finished in hard 
wood, electric-lighted, telephoned, with many baths, large 
“picture”? windows of plate glass, with potted ferns in 
them, and much the same furniture, — wholesome, com- — 
fortable ‘“homes.’’ Isabelle, turning back to her house to 
cope with the three Swedes that her mother had sent 
on from St. Louis, had a queer sense of anti-climax. 
She swept the landscape with a critical eye, feeling she 
knew it all, even to what the people were saying at this 
moment in those large American-Georgian mansions; what 
Torso was doing at this moment in its main street. ... No, 
it could not be for the Lanes for long, —that was the 
conviction in her heart. Their destiny would be larger, 
fuller than any to be found in Torso. Just what she meant 
by a “large, full life,” she had never stopped to set down; 
but she was sure it was not to be found here in Torso. 

Here began, however, the routine of her married life. 
Each morning she watched her husband walk down the broad 
avenue to the electric car, — alert, strong, waving his news- 
paper to her as he turned the corner. Each afternoon she 
waited for him at the same place, or drove down to the office 
with the Kentucky horses that she had bought, to take 
him for a drive before dinner. He greeted her each time 
with the same satisfied smile, apparently not wilted by the 
long hours in a hot office. There was a smudged, work-a-day 
appearance to his face and linen, the mark of Torso, the same 
mark that the mill-hands across the street from the A. and F . 
offices brought home to their wives. ... Thus the long 
summer days dragged. For distraction there was a mutiny in 
the crew of Swedish servants, but Isabelle, with her mother’s 


Nee 


TOGETHER 47 


instinct for domestic management, quickly produced order, 
in spite of the completely servantless state of Torso. She 
would telegraph to St. Louis for what she wanted and 
somehow always got it. The house ran, — that was her 
business. It was pretty and attractive, — that was also her 
business. But this woman’s work she tossed off quickly. 
Then what? She pottered in the garden a little, but when 
- the hot blasts of prairie heat in mid-August had shrivelled 
all the vines and flowers and cooked the beds into slabs of 
clay, she retired from the garden and sent to St. Louis for 
the daily flowers. She read a good deal, almost always 
novels, in the vague belief that she was “keeping up” with 
modern literature, and she played at translating some 
German lyrics. 

Then people began to call, — the wives of the Torso great, 
_ her neighbors in those ample mansions scattered all about 
_ the prairie. These she reported to John with a mocking 
sense of their oddity. 

“Mrs. Fraser came to-day. What is she? Tin-plate or 
coal?” 

“He’s the most important banker here,’ her husband 
explained seriously. 

“Oh, — well, she asked me to join the ‘travel-class.’ 
They are going through the Holy Land. What do you 
suppose a ‘travel-class’ is?” . . 

Again it was the wife of the Snipe coal operator, Freke, 

“who wanted me to know that she always got her clothes 
from New York.” She added gently, “I think she wished 
to find out if we are fit for Torso society. I did my best 
to give her the impression we were beneath it.” ... 

These people, all the “society” of Torso, they met also at 
the country club, where they went Sundays for a game of golf, 
which Lane was learning. The wife of the A. and P. superin- 
-tendent could not be ignored by Torso, and so in spite of 
Isabelle’s efforts there was forming around her a social life. 
But the objective point of the day remained John, — his 

going and coming. 


48 TOGETHER 


“Busy day?” she would ask when he bent to kiss her. — 

“They’re all busy days!” 

“Tell me what you did.” 

“Oh,” he would answer vaguely, “just saw people and 
dictated letters and telegrams, — yes, it was a busy day.” 
And he left her to dress for dinner. 

She knew that he was weary after all the problems that 
he had thrust his busy mind into since the morning. She 
had no great curiosity to know what these problems were. 
She had been accustomed to the sanctity of business reserve 
in her father’s house: men disappeared in the morning - 
to their work and emerged to wash and dress and be as amus- 
ing as they might for the few remaining hours of the day. 
There were rumors of what went on in that mysterious world 
of business, but the right kind of men did not disclose the 
secrets of the office to women. 

It never occurred to Lane to go over with her the minute 
detail of his full day: how he had considered an applica- 
tion from a large shipper for switching privileges, had dis- 
cussed the action of the Torso and Northern in cutting the coal 
rates, had lunched with Freke, the president of a coal com- 
pany that did business with the A. and P.; and had received, 
_ just as he left the office, the report of a serious freight wreck at 
one end of his division. As he had said, a busy day! And 
this business of life, like an endless steel chain, had caught hold 
of him at once and was carrying him fastinits revolution. It 
was his life; he liked it. With cool head and steady nerves 
he set himself at each problem, working it out according to 
known rules, calling on his trained experience. He did not 
look into the future, content with the preoccupation of the 
present, confident that the future, whatever and wherever 
it might be, would be crowded with affairs, activity, which 
he would meet competently... . 

“Well, what have yow been doing?” he asked as he sat 
down, fresh from his bath, and relaxed comfortably in an- 
ticipation of a pleasant dinner. Isabelle made a great point 
of dinner, having it served formally by two maids, with five 


TOGETHER 49 


courses and at least one wine, “to get used to living properly,” 
as she explained vaguely. 

“Mrs. Adams called.”’ She was the wife of the manager 
of the baking-powder works and president of.the country 
club, a young married woman from a Western city with pre- 
tensions to social experience. “John,”’ Isabelle added after 
mentioning this name, “do you think we shall have to stay 
here long ?”’ 

Her husband paused in eating his soup to look at her. 
“Why — why?” 

“Tt’s so second-classy,’”’ she continued; “at least the 
women are, mostly. There’s only one I’ve met so far that 
seemed like other people one has known.” 

“Who is she?” Lane inquired, ignoring the large question. , 

“Mrs. Falkner.” 

“Rob Falkner’s wife? He’s engineer at the Pleasant 
Valley mines.” 

“She came from Denver.” 

“They say he’s a clever engineer.” 

“She is girlish and charming. She told me all about 
every one in Torso. She’s been here two years, and she 
seems to know everybody.” 

“And she thinks Torso is second-class?’’? Lane inquired. 

“She would like to get away, I think. But they are poor, 
I suppose. Her clothes look as if she knew what to wear, — 
pretty. She says there are some interesting people here 
when you find them out. ... Who is Mr. Darnell? A 
lawyer.” 

“Tom Darnell? He’s one of the local counsel for the 
road, —a Kentuckian, politician, talkative sort of fellow, 
very popular with all sorts. What did Mrs. Falkner have 
to say about Tom Darnell ?”’ 

“She told me all about his marriage, — how he ran away 
with his wife from a boarding-school in Kentucky — and 
was chased by her father and brothers, and they fired 
at him. A regular Southern scrimmage! But they got 
across the river and were married.” 

B 


50 TOGETHER 


“Sounds like Darnell,’’ Lane remarked contemptuously. 

“Tt sounds exciting !’’ his wife said. 

The story, as related by the vivacious Mrs. Falkner, had 
stirred Isabelle’s curiosity; she could not dismiss this Ken- 
tucky politician as curtly as her husband had disposed of 
hie ceamaueas 

They were both wilted by the heat, and after dinner they 
strolled out into the garden to get more air, walking leisurely 
arm in arm, while Lane smoked his first cigar.. Having 
finished the gossip for the day, they had little to say to each 
other, — Isabelle wondered that it should be so little! 
Two months of daily companionship after the intimate 
weeks of their engagement had exhausted the topics for mere 
talk which they had in common. ‘To-night,as Lane wished 
to learn the latest news from the wreck, they went into the 
town, crossing on their way to the office the court-house 
square. This was the centre of old Torso, where the dis- 
tillery aristocracy still lived in high, broad-eaved houses of 
the same pattern as the Colonel’s city mansion. In one of 
these, which needed painting and was generally neglected, 
the long front windows on the first story were open, revealing 
a group of people sitting around a supper-table. 

“There’s Mrs. Falkner,’ Isabelle remarked; “the one at 
the end of the table, in white. This must be where they live.” 

Lane looked at the house with a mental estimate of the rent: 

“‘Large house,’’ he observed. 

Isabelle watched the people laughing and talking about 
the table, which was still covered with coffee cups and glasses. 
A sudden desire to be there, to hear what they were saying, 
seized her. A dark-haired man was leaning forward and 
emphasizing his remarks by tapping a wine glass with along 
finger. That might be Tom Darnell, she thought... . 
The other houses about the square were dark and gloomy, 
most of them closed for the summer. 

“There’s a good deal of money in Torso,’ Lane commented, 
glancing at a brick house with wooden pillars. “It’s a 
- growing place,—more business coming all the time.” 


TOGETHER 51 


He looked at the town with the observant eye of the rail- 
road officer, who sees in the prosperity of any community 
but one word writ large, — TRAFFIC. 

And that word was blown through the soft night by the 
puffing locomotives in the valley below, by the pall of smoke 
that hung night and day over this quarter of the city, the 
dull glow of the coke-ovens on the distant hills. To the man 
this was enough —this and his home; business and the 
woman he had won, — they were his two poles! 


CHAPTER VI 


“You see,” continued Bessie Falkner, drawing up her 
pretty feet into the piazza cot, “it was just love at first 
sight. I was up there at the hotel in the mountains, trying 
to make up my mind whether I could marry another man, 
who was awfully rich — owned a mine and a ranch; but he 
was so dull the horses would go to sleep when we were out 
driving. ... And then just as I concluded it was the only 
thing for me to do, to take him and make the best of him, — 
then Rob rode up to the hotel in his old tattered suit — he 


was building a dam or something up in the mountains — . © 


and I knew I couldn’t marry Mr. Mine-and-Ranch. That 
was all there was to it, my dear. The rest of the story? 
Why, of course he made the hotel his headquarters while 
he was at work on the dam; I stayed on, too, and it came 
along — naturally, you know.” 

Mrs. Falkner dipped into a box of candy and swung the 
cot gently to and fro. The men were still talking inside the 
house and the two wives had come outside for long confi- 
dences. Isabelle, amused by this sketch of the Colorado 
courtship, patted the blond woman’s little hand. Mrs. 
Falkner had large blue eyes, with waving tendrils of hair, 
which gave her face the look of childish unsophistication, — 
especially at this moment when her voluptuous lips were 
closing over a specially desired piece of candy. 

“Of course it would come along — with you!” 

“T didn’t do a thing — just waited,’ Bessie protested, 
fishing about the almost empty box for another delectable 
bit. “He did it all. He was in such a hurry he wanted 
to marry me then and there at the hotel and go live 
up in the mountains in a cabin above the dam where he was 
at work. He’s romantic. Men are all like that then, don’t 

52 


TOGETHER 53 


-you think? But of course it couldn’t be that way; so we 
got married properly in the fall in Denver, and then came 
straight here. And,” with a long sigh, ‘‘ we’ve been here ever 
since. Stuck!” 

“T should think you would have preferred the cabin above 
the dam,” Isabelle suggested, recalling her own romantic 
notion of Dog Mountain. Mrs. Falkner made a little grimace. 

“That might do for two or three months. But snowed in 
all the winter, even with the man you like best in all the 
world? He’d kill you or escape through the drifts... . 
You see we hadn’t a thing, not a cent, except his salary and 
that ended with the dam. It was only eighty a month 
any way. ‘This is better, a hundred and fifty,” she explained 
with childish frankness. ‘But Rob has to work harder 
and likes the mountains, is always talking of going back. 
But I say there are better things than hiding yourself at 
the land’s end. There’s St. Louis, or maybe New York!” 

Isabelle wondered how the Falkners were able to support 
such a hospitable house —they had two small children 
and Bessie had confided that another was coming in the 
spring — on the engineer’s salary. 

‘“‘And the other one,’’ Mrs. Falkner added in revery,-“‘is 
more than a millionnaire now.” 

Her face was full of speculation over what might have been 
as the wife of all that money. 

“But we are happy, Rob and I, — except for the bills! 
Don’t you hate bills?” , 

Isabelle’s only answer was a hearty laugh. She found 
this pretty, frank little “Westerner” very attractive. 

“Tt was bills that made my mother unhappy — broke her 
heart. Sometimes we had money,—most generally not. 
Such horrid fusses when there wasn’t any. But what is 
one to do? You’ve got to go on living somehow. Rob 
says we can’t afford this house, — Rob is always afraid we 
won’t get through. But we do somehow. I tell him that 
the good time is coming,—we must just anticipate it, draw 
a little on the future.”’ 


54 TOGETHER 


At this point the men came through the window to the 
piazza. Bessie shook her box of candy coquettishly at 
Lane, who took the chair beside her. Evidently he thought | 
her amusing, as most men did. Falkner leaned against the 
white pillar and stared up at the heavens. -Isabelle, accus- 
tomed to men of more conventional social qualities, had 
found the young engineer glum and odd. He had a stern, 
rather handsome face, a deep furrow dividing his forehead and 
meeting the part of his thick brown hair, which curled slightly 
at the ends. ‘If he didn’t look so cross, he would be quite 
handsome,” thought Isabelle, wondering how long it might be 
before her host would speak to her. She could see him as 
he rode up to the hotel piazza that day, when Bessie Falkner 
had made up her mind on the moment that she could not 
marry “the other man.” Finally Falkner broke his glum 
silence. 

“Do you eat candy, Mrs. Lane? Pounds of it, 1 mean, — 
so that it is your staple article of diet.” 

“Tut, tut,’ remarked his wife from her cot. “Don’t 
complain.” 

His next remark was equally abrupt. 

“There’s only one good thing in this Torso hole,” he 
observed with more animation than he had shown all the 
evening, “and that’s the coke-ovens at night —have you 
noticed them? They are like the fiery pits, smouldering, 
ready for the damned!” 

It was not what she expected from a civil engineer, in 
Torso, Indiana, and she was at a loss for a reply. 

“You’d rather have stayed in Colorado?” she asked 
frankly. 

He turned his face to her and said earnestly, ‘‘ Did you 
ever sleep out on a mountain with the stars close above 
you? —‘the vast tellurian galleons’ voyaging through 
space ?”’ 

Isabelle suspected that he was quoting poetry, which also 
seemed odd in Torso. 

“Yes, — my brother and I used to camp out at our home 


TOGETHER 55 


in Connecticut. But I don’t suppose you would call our 
~ Berkshire Hills mountains.” 
“No,” he replied dryly, “I shouldn’t.” 
And their conversation ended. Isabelle wished that the 
Darnells had not been obliged to go home immediately after 
‘ supper. The young lawyer knew how to talk to women, 
-and had made himself very agreeable, telling stories of 
his youth spent among the mountains with a primitive 
people. She had observed that he drank a good deal of 
whiskey, and there was something in his black eyes that 
: made her uncomfortable. But he was a man that women 
_ liked to think about: he touched their imaginations. She 
did not talk about him to John on their way home, however, 
_ but discussed the Falkners. 
“Don’t you think she is perfectly charming?’’ (Charming 
_ was the word she had found for Bessie Falkner.) “So natural 
and amusing! She’s very Western — she can’t have seen 
much of life — but she isn’t a bit ordinary.” 

“Yes, I like her,’’ Lane replied unenthusiastically, “and 
he seems original. I shouldn’t wonder if he were clever in 
his profession; he told me a lot about Freke’s mines.”’ 

What he had learned about the Pleasant Valley mines 
was the chief thing in the evening to Lane. He did not 
understand why Isabelle seemed so much more eager to 
know these people — these Darnells and Falkners — than 
the Frasers and the Adamses. She had made fun of the 
solemn dinner that the Frasers had given to introduce them 
into Torso “society.” 

“T wonder how they can live on that salary,” Isabelle 
remarked. ‘One hundred and fifty a month!” 

“He must make something outside.” 


After the Lanes had gone, Bessie Falkner prepared yawn- 
ingly for bed, leaving her husband to shut up the house. 
Her weekly excitement of entertaining people over, she 
always felt let down, like a poet after the stir of creation. It 
was useless to go over the affair with Rob, as he was merely 


= 


56 TOGETHER 


and how they looked and deciding whom she could have the 


| 


bored. But she spent hours thinking what the women said 


next time. On her way to bed she went into the nursery | 
where her two little girls were asleep in their cots beside | 


the nurse, and finding a window open woke the nurse to 


reprove her for her carelessness. In the hall she met her 


husband bringing up the silver. 

“EHmma is so thoughtless,’ she complained. “I shall 
have to let her go if I can find another servant in this town.”’ 

Her husband listened negligently. The Falkners were 
perpetually changing their two servants, or were getting on 
without them. 

“Mrs. Lane’s maids all wear caps,’’ Mrs. Falkner had ob- 
served frequently to her husband. 

Bessie had strict ideas of how a house should be run, ideas 
derived from the best houses that she was familiar with. 
Since the advent of the Lanes she had extended these ideas 
and strove all the harder to achieve magnificent results. 
Though the livery of service was practically unknown in 
Torso, she had resolved to induce her cook (and maid of all 
work) to serve the meals with cap and apron, and. also 
endeavored to have the nursemaid open the door and help 
serve when company was expected. , 

“What’s the use! !’? her husband protested. “They'll 
only get up and go.” 

He could not understand the amount of earnest attention 
and real feeling that his wife put into these things, — her 
pride to have her small domain somewhat resemble the more 
affluent ones that she admired. Though her family had been 
decidedly plain, they had given her “advantages” in educa- 
tion and dress, and her own prettiness, her vivacity and 
charm, had won her way into whatever society Kansas City 
and Denver could offer. She had also visited here and there 
in different parts of the country, — once in New York, and 
again at a cottage on the New England coast where there 
were eight servants, a yacht, and horses. These experiences 
of luxury, of an easy and large social life, she had appbed 


a 


TOGETHER 57 


through every pore. With that marvellous adaptability 
of her race she had quickly formed her ideals of ‘“‘ how people 
ought to live.” It was frequently difficult to carry out 
these ideals on a circumscribed income, with a husband who 
cared nothing for appearances, and that was a source of 
constant discontent to Bessie. 

“Coming to bed?”’ she asked her husband, as she looked 
in vain for the drinking water that the maid was supposed 
to bring to her bedside at night. 

“No,” Falkner answered shortly. ‘I’ve got to make 
out those estimates somehow before morning. If you will 
have people all the time —”’ 

Bessie turned in at her door shrugging her shoulders. 
Rob was in one of his “‘ cross’’ moods, — overworked, poor 
boy! She slowly began to undress before the mirror, 
thinking of Isabelle Lane’s stylish figure and her perfect 
clothes. ‘She must have lots of money,” she reflected, 
‘“‘and so nice and simple! He’s attractive, too. Rob is 
foolish not to like them. He showed his worst side to-night. 
If he wants to get on, — why, they are the sort of people he 
ought to know.”’ Her husband’s freakish temper gave her 
much trouble, his unexpectedly bearish moods when she 
was doing her very best for him, “‘ bringing him out”’ as 
she put it, making the right kind of friends, — influential 
ones, so that he might have some chance in the scramble for 
the good things of life. Surely that was a wife’s part. 
Bessie was satisfied that she had done much for her husband 
in this way, developed him socially; for when he rode up to 
the mountain hotel, he was solitary, moody, shy. To-night 
he hadn’t kissed her, —in fact hadn’t done so for several 
days. He was tired by the prolonged heat, she supposed, 
and worried about the bills. He was always worried about 
expenses. 

As the clothes slipped from her still shapely figure, she 
stood before the glass, thinking in a haze of those first 
lover-days that had departed so soon. Now instead of 
petting her, Rob spent his hours at home upstairs in his 


58 TOGETHER 


attic workroom, doing extra work or reading. Could it be 
that he was growing tired of her, so soon, in four years? 
She glanced over her shoulder at her pretty arms, her plump 
white neck reflected in the glass, and smiled unconsciously 
with assurance. Oh, he would come back to the lover- 
mood —she was still desirable! And as the smile curved 
her lip she ea “T married him for love!” She was 
very proud of that. 

The house was now « denoiously cool and quiet. Bessie 
sank into her bed with a sigh, putting out one hand for a 
magazine and turning on the électric light beside the bed. 

It had been. a tiresome day, with the supper to bring off. 
There had been six courses, and everything had been very 
nice. The black cook she had engaged to prepare the meal 
was a treasure, could serve a better dinner than Mrs. Fraser’s 
or Mrs. Adams’s. She herself had made the salad and 
prepared the iced grape-fruit. Every limb ached —she 
was always so tired. She loved this last quiet hour of the 
day that she had by herself, now that the nurse took both 
the children. With her delicate health the nurse had been 
a necessity... She usually looked blooming and rosy, but 
was always tired, always had been as long as she could 
remember. The doctor had told Falkner after the second 
child came that his wife would always be a delicate woman, 
must be’ carefully protected, or she would collapse and have 
the fearful modern disease of nerves. So Falkner had 
insisted on having the best nurse obtainable to relieve her 
from the wearing nights, — though it meant that somehow 
eighteen hundred dollars must grow of itself! 

As midnight sounded from the court-house clock, Bessie 
laid down the magazine and stretched her tired limbs, 
luxuriating in the comfort of her soft bed. The story she 
had been reading was sentimental, — the love of a cow-boy 
for the fair daughter of a railroad president. She longed 
for the caresses of her cow-boy lover, and wondered dreamily 
if Lane were a devoted husband. He seemed so; but all 
men were probably alike: their first desires gratified, they 





TOGETHER 59 


thought of other things. So she put out the light and 
closed her eyes, in faint discontent with life, which was 
proving less romantic than she had anticipated. 

She had her own room. At first it had held two beds, 
her husband sharing the room with her. But as the house 
was large he had taken a room on the third story. Nowa- 
days, as Bessie knew, the better sort of American household 
does not use the primitive double bed. For hygiene and 
comfort enlightened people have taken to separate beds, 
then separate quarters. A book might be written on the 
doing away of the conjugal bed in American life! There 
should be interesting observations on the effect of this change, 
social, and hygienic, and moral, —oh, most interesting! 
‘ A contented smile at last stole over the young wife’s 
face. Was she dreaming of her babies, of those first days 
of love, when her husband never wished her out of his sight, 
or simply of the well-ordered, perfectly served, pretty supper 
that she had given for the Lanes whom she was most anxious 
to know well? The supper had quite met her aspirations 
except in the matter of caps and aprons, had satisfied her 
cherished ideal of how “nice people” lived in this world. 

That ideal is constantly expanding thes& days. In 
America no one is classed by birth or profession. All is 
to make, and the women with their marvellous powers of 
absorption do the shaping. In a thousand ways they learn 
“how to live as other people do,’’ —in magazines and on 
bill boards, in the theatre, the churches, the trains, the 
illustrated novel. Suggestions how to live! 

Meantime upstairs in the mansard room of the old house 
Falkner was figuring over stresses and strains of an unemo- 
tional sort. When past midnight he shoved the papers into 
the drawer, a familiar thought coursed through his brain: 
somehow he must sell himself at a dearer price. Living 
was not cheap even in Torso, and the cost of living was 
ever going higher, so the papers said and the wives. There 
were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. 
There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to 


60 TOGETHER 


live “like other people.’? With a gesture that said, “Oh, 
Hell!’’ he jumped from his chair and took down a 
volume of verse from the pine shelf above the mantel 
and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose 
himself and forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of 
things not seen. 

The book dropped from his hand. He had carried it in 
his mountain kit, had read it to Bessie when they were 
engaged. She had listened, flattered, looking at him and 
smoothing his hair. But after marriage she confessed 
flatly that she was not “literary.’”? So they had read together 
a book of travels, then a novel, then a magazine, and lat- 
terly nothing. Taking another cigarette, the man read on, 
and before his tired eyes rose the purple peaks of the Rockies, 
the shining crests of snow, the azure sky. And also a cabin 
in a green meadow beside a still mountain lake, and a woman 
fair and tall and straight, with blue eyes and a caressing 
hand, —a child on one arm. But Bessie was sleeping 
downstairs. Putting out his light, the man went to bed. 

The man on horseback riding up the trail to look into the 
girl’s eyes that summer afternoon! 


CHAPTER VII 


THe two young wives quickly became very intimate. 
They spent many mornings together “reading,” that is, 
they sat on the cool west veranda of the Lanes’s house, or 
less often on the balcony at the Falkners’s, with a novel 
turned down where their attention had relaxed, chatting 
and sewing. I<abelle found Lassie Cstoeuee ‘eunni:,” 
“amusing,” “odd,’’? and always “charmiug.’’ She had “an 
air about her,” a picturesque style of gossip that she used 
when instructing Isabelle in the intricacies of Torso society. 
Isabelle also enjoyed the homage that Bessie paid her. 

Bessie frankly admired Isabelle’s house, her clothes, her 
stylish self, and enjoyed her larger experience of life, — the 
Washington winter, Europe, even the St. Louis horizon, — all 
larger than anything she had ever known. Isabelle was very 
nearly the ideal of what she herself would have liked to be. 
So when they had exhausted Torso and their households, 
they filled the morning hours with long tales about people 
they had known, — “Did you ever hear of the Dysarts in 
St. Louis? Sallie Dysart was a great belle, — she had no 
end of affairs, and then she married Paul Potter. The 
Potters were very well-known people in Philadelphia, etc.” 
Thus they gratified their curiosity about lives, all the inter- 
esting complications into which men and women might 
get. Often Bessie stayed for luncheon, a dainty affair 
served on a little table which the maid brought out and 
set between them. Sometimes Bessie had with her the 
baby girl, but oftener not, for she became exacting and 
interfered with the luncheon. 

Bessie had endless tidbits of observation about Torso- 
nians. “Mrs. Freke was a cashier in a Cleveland restaurant 
when he married her. Don’t you see the bang in her hair 

61 


a? 


62 TOGETHER | 


still? ... Mrs. Griscom came from Kentucky, —very old 
family. Tom Griscom, their only son, went to Harvard, — 
he was very wild. He’s disappeared since. ... Yes, 


i 


Mrs. Adams is common, but the men seem to like her. I 
don’t trust her-green eyes. Mr. Darnell, they say, is always 
there. Oh, Mr. Adams isn’t the one to care!” 

Often they came back to Darnell, —that impetuous, 
black-haired young lawyer with his deep-set, fiery eyes, 
who had run away with his wife. . 

“She looks scared most of the time, don’t you think? 
They say he drinks. Too bad, isn’t it? Such a brilliant 
man, and with the best chances. He ran for Congress two 
years ago on the Democratic ticket, and just failed. He is 
going to try again this next fall, but his railroad connection 
is against him. ... Oh, Sue Darnell, —she is nobody; 
she can’t hold him — that’s plain.” 

“What does she think of Mrs. Adams?” 

Bessie shrugged her shoulders significantly. 

“Sue has to have her out at their farm. Well, they say 
she was pretty gay herself, — engaged to three men at 
once, —one of them turned up in Torso last year. Tom 
was very polite to him, elaborately polite; but he left town 
very soon, and she seemed dazed. ... I guess she has 
reason to be afraid of her husband. He looks sometimes 
— well, I shouldn’t like to have Rob look at me that way, 
not for half a second!” 

The two women clothed the brilliant Kentuckian with all 
the romance of unbridled passion. “He sends to Alabama 
every. week for the jasmine Mrs. Adams wears — fancy!” 

“Really! Oh, men! men!” | 

“Tt’s probably her fault — she can’t hold him.” 

That was the simple philosophy which they evolved 
about marriage, —men were uncertain creatures, only 
partly tamed, and it was the woman’s business to “‘hold” 
them. So much the worse for the women if they happened 
to be tied to men they could not “hold.” Isabelle, remem- 
bering on one occasion the flashing eyes of the Kentuckian, 


: 
{ 





TOGETHER 63 


his passionate denunciation of mere commercialism in pub- 
lic life, felt that there might be some defence for poor 
Tom Darnell, — even in his flirtation with the ‘ common” 
Mrs. Adams. 

Then the two friends went deeper and talked husbands, 
both admiring, both hilariously amused at the masculine 
absurdities of their mates. 

“T hate to see poor Rob so harassed with bills,’’ Bessie 
confided. “It is hard for him, with his tastes, poor boy. 
But I don’t know what I can do about it. When he com- 
plains, I tell him we eat everything we have, and I am sure 
I never get a dress!” 

Isabelle, recollecting the delicious suppers she had had 
at the Falkners’s, thought that less might be eaten. In 
her mother’s house there had always been comfort,. but 
strict economy, even after the hardware business paid 
enormous profits. This thrift was in her blood. Bessie 
had said to Rob that Isabelle was “close.’”? But Isabelle 
only laughed at Bessie when she was in these moods 
of dejection, usually at the first of the month. Bessie 
was so amusing about her troubles that she could not take 
her seriously. 

“Never mind, Bessie!’’ she laughed. “He probably 
likes to work hard for you, — every man does for the woman 
he loves.” | 

And then they would have luncheon, specially devised for 
Bessie’s epicurean taste. For Bessie Falkner did devout 
homage to a properly cooked dish. Isabelle, watching the 
contented look with which the little woman swallowed a 
bit of jellied meat, felt that any man worth his salt would like 
to gratify her innocent tastes. Probably Falkner couldn’t 
endure a less charming woman for his wife. So she con- 
doned, as one does with a clever child, all the little mani- 
festations of waywardness and selfishness that she was 
too. intelligent not to see in her new friend. Isabelle liked 
to spoil Bessie Falkner. Everybody liked to indulge her, 
just as one likes to feed a pretty child with cake and candy, 


64 TOGETHER 


especially when the discomforts of the resulting indigestion 
fall on some one else. 

“Oh, it will all come out right in the end!” Bessie usually 
exclaimed, after she had well lunched. She did not see 
things very vividly far ahead, — nothing beyond the pleas- 
ant luncheon, the attractive house, her adorable Isabelle. 
“T always tell Rob when he is blue that his chance will 
come some day; he’ll make a lucky strike, do some work 
that attracts public attention, and then we’ll all be as happy 
as can be.” 

She had the gambler’s instinct; her whole life had been 
a gamble, now winning, now losing, even to that moment 
when her lover had ridden up to the hotel and solved her 
doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had known 
men whose fortunes came over night, “millions and mil- 
lions,’ as she told Isabelle, rolling the words in her little 
mouth toothsomely. Why not to her? She felt that any 
day fortune might smile. 

“My husband says that Mr. Falkner is doing excellent 
work, — Mr. Freke said so,’”’ Isabelle told Bessie. 

“And Rob talks as if he were going to lose his job next 
week! Sometimes I wish he would lose it — and we could 
go away to a large city.” 

Bessie thus echoed the feeling in Isabelle’s own heart, — 
“T don’t want to spend my life on an Indiana prairie!”’ 
To both of the women Torso was less a home, a corner of 
the earth into which to put down roots, than a way-station 
in the drama and mystery of life. Confident in their hus- 
bands’ ability to. achieve Success, they dreamed of other 
scenes, of a larger future, with that restlessness of a new 
civilization, which has latterly seized even women — the 
supposedly stable sex. 


As the year wore on there were broader social levels into 
which Isabelle in company with Bessie dipped from time 
to time. The Woman’s Club had a lecture course in art and 
sociology. They attended one of the lectures in the Normal 


z 


TOGETHER 65 


School building, and laughed furtively in their muffs at 
“Madam President” of the Club, —a portly, silk-dressed 
dame, — and at the ill-fitting black coat of the university 
professor who lectured. They came away before the recep- 
tion. 

“Dowds!”’ Bessie summed up succinctly. 

“Rather crude,’ Isabelle agreed tolerantly. 

During the winter Isabelle did some desultory visiting 
among the Hungarians employed at the coke-ovens, for 
Bessie’s church society. Originally of Presbyterian faith, 
she had changed at St. Mary’s to the Episcopal church, 
and latterly all church affiliations had grown faint. The 
Colonel maintained a pew in the first Presbyterian Church, 
but usually went to hear the excellent lectures of a Unitarian 
preacher. Isabelle’s religious views were vague, broad, 
liberal, and unvital. Bessie’s were simpler, but scarcely 
more effective. Lane took a lively interest in the railroad 
Y.M.C.A., which he believed to be helpful for young men. He 
himself had been a member in St. Louis and had used the 
gymnasium. Isabelle got up an entertainment for the Hun- 
garian children, which was ended by a disastrous thunder- 
storm. She had an uneasy feeling that she “ought to do 
something for somebody.’ Alice Johnston, she knew, had 
lived at a settlement for a couple of years. But there were no 
settlements in Torso, and the acutely poor were looked after 
by the various churches. Just what there was to be done for 
others was not clear. When she expressed her desire “not 
to live selfishly”? to her husband, he replied easily : — 

“There are societies for those things, I suppose. It 
ought to Be natural, what we do for others.” ° 

Just what was meant by “natural’’ was not clear to Isa-_ 
belle, but the word accorded with the general belief of her 
class that the best way to help in the world was to help 
one’s self, to become useful to others by becoming important 
in the community, —a comfortable philosophy. But there 
was one definite thing that they might accomplish, and that 
was to help the Falkners into easier circumstances, 

a Y 


66 TOGETHER 


“Don’t you suppose we could do something for them? 
Now that the baby has come they are dreadfully poor,— 
can’t think of going away for the summer, and poor Bessie 
needs it and the children. J meant to ask the Colonel when 
he was here last Christmas. Isn’t there something Rob 
could do in the road?” 

Lane shook his head. 

“That is not my department. There might be a place 
in St. Louis when they begin work on the new terminals. 
I’ll speak to Brundage the next time he’s here.” 

“St. Louis — Bessie would like that. She’s such a dear, 
and would enjoy pretty things so much! It seems as if 
she almost had a right to them.” 

“Why did she marry a poor man, then?” Lane demanded 
with masculine logic. 

“Because she loved him, silly! She isn’t mercenary.” 

“Well, then, —”’ but Lane did not finish his sentence, 
kissing his wife instead. ‘‘She’s rather extravagant, isn’t 
she?’* he asked after a time. 

“Oh, she’ll learn to manage.” 

“T will do what I can for him, of course.” 

And Isabelle considered the Falkners’ fate settled; John, 
like her father, always brought about what he wanted. 


They spent the Christmas holidays that year with her 
parents. Lane was called to New York on railroad business, 
and Isabelle had a breathless ten days with old friends, 
dining and lunching, listening to threads of gossip that had 
been broken by her exile to Torso. She discovered an 
unexpected avidity for diversion, and felt almost ashamed 
to enjoy people so keenly, to miss her husband so little. 
She put it all down to the cramping effect of Torso. 
So when the Colonel asked her how she liked her new 
home, she burst forth, feeling that her opportunity had 
come : — | 

“Tt doesn’t agree with me, I think. I’ve grown fright- 
fully thin,—John says I mustn’t spend another summer 


See 
ob 


TOGETHER 67 


there. ... J hope we can get away soon. John must 
have a wider field, don’t you think ?”’ 

“He seems to find Torso pretty wide.”’ 

“He’s done splendid work, I know. But I don’t want 
him side-tracked all his life in a little Indiana town. Don’t 
you think you could speak to the Senator or Mr. Beals?” 

The Colonel smiled. 

“Yes, I could speak to them, if John wants me to.” 

“He hasn’t said anything about it,’’ she hastened to add. 

“So you are tired of Torso?” he asked, smiling still more. 

“Tt seems so good to be here, to hear some music, and go 
to the theatre; to be near old friends,” she explained apolo- 
getically. “ Don’t you and mother want us to be near you?” 

“Of course, my dear! We want you to be happy.” 

“Why, we are happy there, — only it seems so out of the 
world, so second-class. And John is not second-class.” 

“No, John is not second-class,”’ the Colonel admitted with 
another smile. “And for that reason I don’t believe he 
will want me to interfere.” 

Nevertheless she kept at her idea, talking it over with her 
mother. All her friends were settled in the great cities, 
and it was only natural that she should aspire to something 
better than Torso —for the present, St. Louis. So the 
Colonel spoke to Lane, and Lane spoke to his wife when they 
were back once more in the Torso house. He was grave, 
almost hurt. , 

“Y’m sorry, Belle, you are so tired of life here. I can 
take another position or ask to be transferred; but you must 
understand, dear, that whatever is done, it must be by 
myself. I don’t want favors, not even from the Colonel!” 

She felt ashamed and small, yet protested: “I don’t 
see why you should object. Every one does the same, — 
uses all the pull he has.”’ 

“There are changes coming, —I prefer to wait. The man 
who uses least pull usually hangs on longest.” 

As he walked to the office that morning, the thought of 
Isabelle’s restlessness occupied his mind. “It’s dull for 


68 TOGETHER 


her here, of course. It isn’t the kind of life she’s been used 
to, or had the right to expect as the Colonel’s daughter.” 
He felt the obligation to live up to his wife, having won 
her from a superior position. Like a chivalrous American 
gentleman he was not aggrieved because even during the first 
two years of marriage, he — their life together — was not 
enough to satisfy his wife. He did not reflect that his mother 
had accepted unquestioningly the Id6wa town to which his 
father had brought her after the War; nor that, Isabelle’s 
mother had accepted cheerfully the two rooms in the little 
brick house near the hardware store. Those were other days. 

He saw the picture of Isabelle standing beside the dining- 
room window with the sun on her hair, —a developed type 
of human being, that demanded much of life for satisfaction 
and adjustment. He plunged into his affairs with an added 
grip, an unconscious feeling that he must by his exertions 
provide those satisfactions and adjustments which his 
wife’s nature demanded for its perfect development. 


CHAPTER VIII 


Ir was to be Isabelle’s first real dinner-party, a large affair for 
Torso. It had already absorbed her energies for a fortnight. 
The occasion was the arrival of a party of Atlantic and 
Pacific officials and directors, who were to inspect the Torso 
and Northern, with a view to its purchase and absorption. 
The Torso and Northern was only a little scab line of rail- 
road, penetrating the soft-coal country for a couple of hun- 
dred miles, bankrupt and demoralized. When Lane saw 
President Beals at Christmas, he pointed out to him what 
might be made of this scrap-heap road, if it were rehabili- 
tated and extended into new coal fields. Beals had shown 
no interest in the Torso and Northern at that time, and 
Lane forgot the matter until he noticed that there was a 
market for Torso and Northern equipment bonds, which 
before had been unsalable at twenty. Seeing them rise 
point by point for a month, he had bought all he could pay 
for; he knew the weather signs in the railroad world. When 
the inspection party was announced, his sagacity was 
proved. 

Isabelle was excited by the prospect of her dinner for the 
distinguished visitors. Who should she have of Torso’s 
best to meet them? The Frasers and the Griscoms, of course. 
John insisted on inviting the Frekes, and Isabelle wanted the 
Darnells and the Adamses, though her husband demurred 
at recognizing the bond. But Tom Darnell was so interest- 
ing, his wife urged, and she was presentable. And the Falk- 
ners? ‘There was no special reason for having them, but 
Isabelle thought it might be a good thing for Rob to meet 
some influential people, and Bessie would surely amuse the 
men. Isabelle’s executive energy was thoroughly aroused. 
The flowers and the wines were ordered from St. Louis, 

69 


70 TOGETHER 


the terrapin from Philadelphia, the fish and the candies 
from New York. Should they have champagne? Lane 
thought not, because “it’s not quite our style.’ But 
Isabelle overbore his objection: — 

“The Adamses always have it, and the Senator will ex- 
pect it and all the New York crowd.” 

Her husband acquiesced, feeling that in these things his 
wife knew the world better than he, —though he would 
have preferred to offer his superior officers a simpler meal. 

The inspection party returned from their trip over the 
Torso and Northern in the best of spirits. Lane felt sure 
that the purchase had been decided upon by this inner 
coterie of the A. and P., of which the mouthpiece, Senator 
Thomas, had emitted prophetic phrases, — “valuable possi- 
bilities undeveloped,” ‘would tap new fields, — good 
feeder,” etc., etc. Lane thought pleasantly of the twenty 
equipment bonds in his safe, which would be redeemed 
by the Atlantic and Pacific at par and accrued interest, and 
he resolved to secure another block, if they were to be had, — 
before the sale was officially confirmed by the directors. 
Altogether it had been an agreeable jaunt. He had met 
several influential directors and had been generally con- ~ 
sulted as the man who knew the exact local conditions. 
And he was aware that he had made a favorable impression 
as a practical railroad man... . . 

When his guests came down to the drawing-room, he — 
was proud of what his wife had done. The house was ablaze. — 
with candles — Bessie had persuaded Isabelle to dispense 
with the electric light —and bunches of heavy, thick-stemmed 
roses filled the vases. A large silver tray of decanters and 
cocktails was placed in the hall beside the blazing fire. 
The Senator had already possessed himself of a cocktail, 
and was making his little speeches to Isabelle, who in a 
Paris gown that gave due emphasis to her pretty shoulders © 
and thin figure, was listening to him gayly. 

“Did you think we lived in a log-cabin, Senator?” she 
protested to his compliments. ‘We eat with knives and — 


TOGETHER ON OUTER 


forks, silver ones too, and sometimes we even have cham- 
pagne in Torso!” .. 

Lane, coming up with the first Vice-president, Vernon 
Short, and a Mr. Stanton, one of the New York directors 
(“a great swell,” and “not just money,’ “has brains, you 
know,’’ as the Senator whispered), was proud of his com- 
petent wife. She was vivaciously awake, and seemed to 
have forgotten her girlish repugnance to the amorous Sena- 
tor. As she stood by the drawing-room door receiving her 
guests, he felt how much superior to all the Torso “leaders’’ 
she was, — yes, she deserved a larger frame! And to-night 
he felt confident that he should be able before long to 
place her in it. ... The Senator, having discharged his 
cargo of compliments, was saying: — 

“Saw your friend Miss Pallanton that was — Mrs. Wood- 
yard —at the Stantons’s the other night, looking like a 
blond Cleopatra. She’s married a bright fellow, and she’ll 
be the making of him. He’ll have to hop around to please 
her, —I expect that’s what husbands are for, isn’t it, 
Lane?” 

And here Isabelle passed him over to Bessie, who had 
come without Falkner, he having made some silly excuse 
at the last moment, — “just cross,’’ as Bessie confided to 
Isabelle. She was looking very fresh in a gown that she and 
Isabelle’s seamstress had contrived, and she smiled up into 
the Senator’s face with her blandest child-manner. The 


Senator, who liked all women, even those who asked his 


views on public questions, was especially fond of what he 


ealled the “unsophisticated” variety, with whom his title 


carried weight. 


When they reached the dining room, Lane’s elation rose to a 
higher pitch. The table, strewn with sweet jasmine and glossy 
leaves, was adorned with all the handsome gold and silver 
service and glass that Isabelle had received at her marriage. 
It was too barbarically laden to be really beautiful; but 
it was in the best prevailing taste of the time, and to Lane, 


who never regarded such matters attentively, “was as 


72 TOGETHER 


good as the best.’’ Looking down the long table after they 
were seated, he smiled with satisfaction and,expanded, a 
subtle suavity born of being host to distinguished folk 
unlocking his ordinarily reticent tongue, causing him even 
to joke with Mrs. Adams, whom he did not like. 

The food was excellent, and the maids, some borrowed, 
some specially imported from St. Louis, made no mistakes, 
at least gross ones. The feast moved as smoothly as need 
be. Isabelle, glancing over the table as the game came 
on, had her moment of elation, too. This was a real dinner- 
party, as elaborate and sumptuous as any that her friends 
in St. Louis might give. The Farrington Beals, she remem- 
bered, had men servants, — most New York families kept 
- them, but that could hardly be expected in Torso. The 
dinner was excellent, as the hungry visitors testified, and 
they seemed to find the women agreeable and the whole 
affair unexpectedly cosmopolitan, which was pleasing after 
spending a long week in a car, examining terminals and coal 
properties. Indeed, it was very much the same dinner 
that was being served at about that hour in thousands of 
well-to-do houses throughout the country all the way from 
New York to San Francisco, — the same dishes, the same 
wines, the same service, almost the same talk. Nothing 
in American life is so completely standardized as what is . 
known as a “dinner” in good, that is well-to-do, society. 
Isabelle Lane, with all her executive ability, her real clever- 
ness, aspired to do “the proper thing,” just as it was done 
in the houses of the moderately rich everywhere. 

The model of hospitality is set by the hotel manager 
and his chef, and all that the clever hostess aspires to do is 
to offer the nearest copy of this to her guests. Neither 
the Lanes nor any of their guests, however, felt this lack 
of distinction, this sameness, in the entertainment provided 
for them.. They had the comfortable feeling of being in 
a cheerful house, well warmed and well lighted, of eating 
all this superfluous food, which they were accustomed to eat, 
of saying the things they always said on such occasions. . . . 


TOGETHER 73 


Isabelle had distributed her Torsonians skilfully: Bessie 
was adorable and kept three men hanging on her stories. 
Mrs. Adams, on the other side of Stanton, was furtively eying 
Darnell, who was talking rather loudly, trying to capture 
the Senator’s attention from Bessie. Across the table 
Mrs. Darnell, still the striking dark-haired schoolgirl, was 
watching her husband, with a pitiful something in her 
frightened eyes that made Isabelle shrink. ... It was 
Darnell who finally brought the conversation to a full 
stop. 

“No, Senator,” he said in his emphatic voice, “it is not 
scum like the assassin of the President that this country 
should fear !”’ 

“We’re paying now for our liberal policy in giving homes 
to the anarchistic refuse of Europe,’’ the Senator insisted. 
“Congress must pass legislation that will protect us from 


_ another Czolgocz.”’ 


Darnell threw up his head, his lips curving disdainfully. 
He had emptied his champagne glass frequently, and there 
was a reckless light in his dark eyes. Isabelle.trembled for 
his next remark : — - 

“You are wrong, sir, if you will allow me to say so. , The 
legislation that we need is not against poor, feeble-minded 
rats like that murderer. We have prisons and asylums 
enough for them. What the country needs is legislation 
against its honored thieves, the real anarchists among us. 
We don’t get ’em from Europe, Senator; we breed ’em 
right here, —in Wall street.” 

If some one had disctiarged assafcetida over the table, 
there could not have been a more unpleasant sensation. 

“You don’t mean quite that, Darnell,’ Lane began; but 
the Kentuckian brushed him to one side. 

“Just that; and some day you will see what Americans 
will do with their anarchists. I tell you this land is full 


of discontent, — men hating dishonesty, privilege, corrup- 


tion, injustice! men ready to fight their oppressors for 
freedom !”’ 


74 TOGETHER “ll 


The men about the table were all good Republicans, de- 1 


vout believers in the gospel of prosperity, all sharers in it. 
They smiled contemptuously at Darnell’s passion. 

“Our martyred President was a great and good man,” 
the Senator observed irrelevantly in his public tone. 

“He was the greatest breeder of corruption that has ever 
held that office,’ retorted the Kentuckian. “ With his 
connivance, a Mark Hanna has forged the worst industrial 
tyranny the world has ever seen, — the i See: grip of 
corporations on the lives of the people.” 

“Pretty strong for a corporation lawyer!” Lane iiueied: 
and the men laughed cynically. 

“T am no longer a corporation hireling,’”’ Darnell said in 
a loud voice. 

Isabelle noticed that Mrs. Adams’s hic glowed, as she 
gazed at the man. 

“JT sent in my resignation last week.” 

“Getting ready for the public platform?” some one sug- 
gested. ‘You won’t find much enthusiasm for those senti- 
ments; wages are too high!” 

There vi a moment of unpleasant silence. The Ken- 
tuckian raised his head as if to retort, then collected him- 
self, and remarked meekly :— 

“Pardon me, Mrs. Lane, this is not the occasion for such 


Pe ee ae cs 


a discussion. I was carried away by my feelings. Some- ~ 


times the real thought will burst out.” 

The apology scarcely bettered matters, and Isabelle’s 
response was flat. 

‘“T am sure it is always interesting to hear both sides.” 

“But I can’t see that to a good citizen there can be two 
sides to the lamentable massacre of our President,” the 
Senator said severely. “I had the privilege of knowing 
our late President intimately, and I may say that I never 
knew a better man, — he was another Lincoln !”’ 

“T don’t see where Mr. Darnell can find this general discon- 
tent,’ the Vice-president of the A. and P. put in suavely. 
“The country has never been so prosperous as during the 


TOGETHER 75 


McKinley-Hanna régime,—wages at the high level, 
exports increasing, crops abundant. What any honest 
and industrious man has to complain of, I can’t see. Why, 
we are looking for men all the time, and we can’t get them, 
at any price!” 

“¢ Ye shall not live by bread alone,’ ’’ Darnell aioe. It 
was a curious remark ior a dinner-party, Isabelle thought. . 
Mrs. Adams’s lips curled as if she understood it. But now > 
that the fiery lawyer had taken to quoting the Bible no one 
paid any further attention to him, and the party sank back 
into little duologues appropriate to the occasion. Later 
Bessie confessed to Isabelle that she had been positively 
frightened lest the Kentuckian would do “something awful,” 
— he had been drinking, she thought. But Darnell remained 
silent for the brief time before the ladies left the room, 
merely once raising his eyes apologetically to Isabelle with 
his wine-glass at his lips, murmuring so that she alone could 
hear him, — “I drink to the gods of Prosperity!” She 
smiled back her forgiveness. He had behaved very badly, 
almost wrecked her successful dinner; but somehow she 
could not dislike him. She did not understand what he 
was saying or why he should say it when people were having 
a good time; but she felt it was part of his interesting and 
uncertain nature... . 

Presently the coffee and cigars came and the women 
went across the hall, while the men talked desultorily until 
the sound of Bessie’s voice singing a French song to Isabelle’s 
accompaniment attracted them. After the next song the 
visitors went, their car being due to leave on the Eastern 
express. They said many pleasant things to Isabelle, and 
the Senator, holding her hand in his broad, soft palm, whis- 
pered : — 

“We can’t let so ane charm stay buried in Torso !”’ 

So when the last home guest had departed and Lane 
sat down before the fire for another cigar, Isabelle 
drew her chair close to his, her. heart beating with pleasant 
emotions. 


| { 


76 TOGETHER 


“Well?” she said expectantly. 

“Splendid —everything! They liked it, I am sure. I 
felt proud of you, Belle!” 

“Tt was all good but the fish, —yes, I thought our party 
was very nice!” Then she told him what the Senator had 
said, and this time Lane did not repel the idea of their 
moving to wider fields. He had made a good impression on 
“the New York crowd,” and he thought again complacently 
of the Torso and Northern equipment bonds. 

“Something may turn up before long, perhaps.” 


New York! It made her heart leap. She felt that she — 


was now doing the wife’s part admirably, furthering John’s 
interests by being a competent hostess, and she liked to 
further his interests by giving pleasant dinners, in an 
attractive gown, and receiving the admiration of clever 
men. It had not been the way that her mother had helped 
on the Colonel; but it was another way, the modern way, 
and a very agreeable way. 


“ Darnell is an awful fool,’ Lane commented. “If he can’t — 
...-hold on to himself any better than he did to-night, he won’t 


get far.” 
“Did you know that he had resigned ?” 


“No, —it’s just as well he has. I don’t think the A. and ~ 


P. would have much use for him. He’s headed the wrong 


way;’’ and he added with hardly a pause, “I think we © 


had better cut the Darnells out, Isabelle. They are not our 
sort.” 


Isabelle, thinking that this was the man’s prejudice, made ~ 


no reply. 


“It was too bad Rob Falkner wouldn’t come. It would — 
have been a good thing for him to meet influential people.” — 
Already she spoke with an air of commanding the right — 


sort that her husband had referred to. 


‘He doesn’t make a good impression on people,” Lane — 


remarked. ‘Perhaps he will make good with his work.” 


As a man who had made his own way he felt the great ~ 


importance of being able to “get on” with people, to interest 
. , Wie 


- 





TOGETHER 77 
them, and keep them aware of one’s presence. But he 
was broad enough to recognize other roads to success. 

“So’ you were quite satisfied, John?” his wife asked as 
she kissed him good-night. 

“Perfectly —it was the right thing —every way — all 
but Darnell’s rot; and that didn’t do much harm.” 

So the two went to their rest perfectly satisfied with them- 
selves and their world. Lane’s last conscious thought was . 
a jumble of equipment bonds, and the idea of his wife at the 
head of a long dinner table in some very grand house — in 
New York. 


CHAPTER IX 


Tuer Darnells had a farm a few miles out of Torso, and 
this spring they had given up their house on the square ana 
moved to the farm permanently. Bessie said it was for 
Mrs. Darnell’s health; men said that the lawyer was in a 
tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that 
Darnell preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever 
he was there. The farm was on a small hill above a 
sluggish river, and was surrounded. by a growth of old syca- 
mores and maples. There was a long stretch of fertile 
fields in front of the house, dotted by the huge barns and steel 
windmills of surrounding farms. 

One Sunday in early May the Lanes were riding in the 
direction of the Darnell place, and Isabelle persuaded her 
husband to call there. “I promised to ride out here and 
show him the horses,’ she explained. The house was a 


Shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes 


and pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with 
the Falkners in the living-room. Tom Darnell was reading 
an Elizabethan play aloud, rolling out the verse in resound- 
ing declamation, punctuated by fervid appreciation, — 
“God!. but that’s fine!” ‘Hear this thing sing.” “Just 
listen to this ripper.”’ if 
““O God! O God! that it were possible 

To undo things done; to call back yesterday ! 

That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, 

To untell the days, and to redeem the hours!” ... 


‘ 

When the Lanes had found chairs before the fire, he kept 
on reading, but with less enthusiasm, as if he felt an alien 
atmosphere. Falkner listened to the lines with closed eyes, 


his grim jaw relaxed, the deep frown smoothed. Bessie 


78 


o 





P| 





TOGETHER 79 


PN iin 
stroked a white cat, —it was plain that her thoughts were 
far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, 
stared vacantly out of the window. The sun lay in broad 
streaks on the dusty floor; there was an air of drowsy peace, 
broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his voice 
rose and fell over the spirited verse. Isabelle enjoyed it 
all; here was something out. of her usual routine. Darnell’s 
face, which reflected the emotion of the lines, was attractive 
to her. He might not be the “right sort”; but he was 
unusual. ... Finally Darnell flung the book into the 
corner and jumped up. 

“Here I am boring you good people with stuff dead and 
gone these hundreds of years. Falkner always starts me 
off. lLet’s have a drink and take a look at the horses.’’ 

The living-room was a mess of furniture and books, wine- 
glasses, bottles, wraps, whips, and riding-boots. Lane 
looked it over critically, while Darnell found some tumblers 
and poured out wine. Then they all went to the stable and 
dawdled about, talking horse. The fields were green with 
the soft grass, already nearly a foot: high. Over the house 
an old grape-vine was budding in purple balls. There was 
a languor and sweetness to the air that instigated laziness. 
Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered on, and 
Darnell exclaimed hospitably: ‘You stay to dinner, of 
course! It is just plain dinner, Mrs. Lane,’’ — and he swept 
away all denial. Turning to his wife, who had said nothing, 
he remarked, “It’s very good of them to come in on us like 
this, isn’t it, Irene?” 

Mrs. Darnell started and mumbled : — 

“Yes, I am sure!” 

His manners to his wife were always perfect, deferential, — 
why should she shrink before him? Isabelle wondered. .. . 
Dinner, plentiful and appetizing, was finally provided by the 

one negro woman. Darnell tried to talk to Lane, but to 

_ Isabelle’s surprise her husband was at a disadvantage: — 

the two men could not find common ground. Then Darnell 

and Falkner quoted poetry, and Isabelle listened. It was 
‘ e® 


80 TOGETHER 


all very different from anything she knew. While the others 
waited for their coffee, Darnell showed her the old orchard, 
—“‘to smell the first blossoms.’ It was languorously still 
there under the trees, with the misty fields beyond. Darnell 
said dreamily : — 

“This is where I’d like to be always, —no, not six miles 
from Torso, but in some far-off country, a thousand miles 
from men!”’ 

“You, a farmer!”’ laughed Isabelle. ‘ And what about 
Congress, and the real anarchists?” 

“Oh, you cannot understand! You do not belong to the 
fields as I do.’’ He pointed ironically to her handsome 
riding skirt. ‘You are of the cities, of people. You will 
flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial 
Torso, and spread your gay wings among the houses of men. 
While I—”’ Hemadea gesture of despair, — half comic, half 
serious, — and his dark face became gloomy. . 

Isabelle was amused at what she called his “heroics,” but 
she felt interested to know what he was; and it flattered 
her that he should see her “spreading gay wings among the 
houses of men.”’ These days she liked to think of herself 
that way. 

“You will be in Washington, while we are still in Torso!” - 
she answered. . 

‘‘Maybe,’”’ he mused. “Well, we play the game — play 
the game — until it is played out!” 

‘He is not happy with his wife,’ Isabelle concluded 
sagely; ‘she doesn’t understand him, and that’s why she 
has that half-scared look.’ 

“T believe you really want to play the game as much as 
anybody,’ she ventured with a little thrill of surprise to 
find herself talking so personally with a man other than her 
husband. 

“You think so?” he demanded, and his face grew wistful. 
“There is nothing in the game compared with the peace that 
one might have —”’ 

Lane was calling to her, but she lingered to say: — 


TOGETHER 81 


6c How rg ) 

“Far away — with love and the fields!” 

They walked back to where John was holding the horses. 
She was oddly fluttered. For the first time since she had 
become engaged a man had somehow given her that special 
sensation, which women know, of confidence between them. 
She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, 
and she did not repeat to him Darnell’s talk, as she usually 
did every smallitem. All that she said was, after a time of 
reflection, ‘He is not a happy man.” 

a3 Who ? De 

“Mr. Darnell.” 

“From what I hear he is in a bad way. It is his own 
fault. He has plenty of ability, —a splendid chance.” 

She felt that this was an entirely inadequate judgment. 
What interested the man was the net result; what interested 
the woman was the human being in whom that result was be- 
ing worked out. They talked a little longer about the fer- 
menting tragedy of the household that they had just left,as the 
world talks, from a distance. But Isabelle made the silent 
reservation, — “she doesn’t understand him — with another 
woman, it would be different.’ . 

Their road home lay through a edb devastated by the 
mammoth sheds of some collieries. A smudged sign bore 
the legend : — 


PLEASANT VALLEY COAL COMPANY 


Lane pulled up his horse and looked carefully about the 
place. Then he suggested turning west to examine another 
coal property. 

“T suppose that Freke man is awfully rich,’’ Isabelle 
remarked, associating the name of the coal company with 
its president; ‘but he’s so common, —I can’t see how you 
can stand him, John!”’ 

Lane turned in his saddle and looked at the elegant figure 
that his wife made on horseback. 

g 


- 


82 TOGETHER 


“He isn’t half as interesting as Tom Darnell or Rob,”’ 
she added. 

“T stand him,” he explained, smiling, “for the reason 
men stand each other most often,—we make money 
together.” 

“Why, how do you mean? He isn’t in the railroad.” 

‘“‘T mean in coal mines,” he replied vaguely, and Isabelle 
realized that she was trespassing on that territory of man’s 
business which she had been brought up to keep away from. 


Nevertheless, as they rode homeward in the westering golden » 


light, she thought of several things: —John was in other 
business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German- 
American was in some way connected with it; business 
covered many mysteries; a man did business with people he 
would not ordinarily associate with. It even crossed her 
mind that what with sleep and business a very large part 
of her husband’s life lay quite beyond her touch. Perhaps 
that was what the Kentuckian meant. by his ideal, —to 
live life with some loved one far away in companionship 
altogether intimate. 

But before long she was thinking of the sect of her riding- 
skirt, and that led to the subject of summer gowns which she 
meant to get when she went East with her mother, and that 
led on to the question of the summer itself. It had been 
decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in 
the Torso heat, but whether she should go to the Connecticut 
place or accept Margaret Lawton’s invitation to the moun- 
tains, she was uncertain. Thus pleasantly her thoughts 
drifted on into her future. sf 


ee 





CHAPTER X 


Ir Isabelle had been curious about her husband’s interest 
in the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, she might have de- 
veloped a highly interesting chapter of commercial history, in 
which Mr. Freke and John Lane were enacting typical parts. 

The Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation is, as may 
easily be inferred, a vast organism, with a history, a life of 
its own, lying like a thick ganglia of nerves and blood-vessels 
a third of the way across our broad continent, sucking its 
_ nourishment from thousands of miles of rich and populous 
territory. To write its history humanly, not statistically, 
would be to reveal an important chapter in the national 
drama for the past forty years,—a drama buried in dusty 
archives, in auditors’ reports, vouchers, mortgage deeds, 
general orders, etc. Some day there will come the great 
master of irony, the man of insight, who will make this 
mass of routine paper glow with meaning visible to all! 

Meanwhile this Atlantic and Pacific, which to-day is a 
- mighty system, was once only a handful of atoms. There was 
the period of Birth; there was the period of Conquest; and 
finally there has come the period of Domination. Now, with 
its hold on the industry, the life of eight states, complete, like 
the great Serpent it can grumble, “I lie here possessing !”’ 

Farrington Beals came to be President of the Atlantic and 
Pacific at the close of the period of Conquest. The con- 
dottieri leaders, those splendid railroad brigands of the 
seventies and eighties, had retired with “the fruits of their 
industry.” To Farrington Beals and his associate was left 
the care of the orchard. It was their task to solidify a 
conglomerate mass of interest-bearing burden, to operate 
the property with the greatest efficiency possible, in order 

83 


84 TOGETHER 


that it might support the burdens laid upon it and yet other 
burdens to come as the land waxed rich, — all burdens being 
ultimately passed to the broad back of the Public, where 
burdens seem naturally to belong. ‘To this end, Beals men, 
as they were called, gradually replaced throughout the 
length and breadth of the system the old operatives, whose 
methods belonged to the coarse days of brigandage! These 
Beals men were youngsters, — capable, active, full of 
“jump,” with the word “traffic, traffic” singing always in 
their ears. Beals was a splendid “operator,” and he rapidly | 
brought the Atlantic and Pacific into the first rank of the 
world’s railroads. That shrewd and conservative statesman, 
Senator Alonzo Thomas (who had skilfully marshalled the 
legal and political forces during the period of Conquest) 
was now chairman of the Board, and he and the President 
successfully readjusted the heterogeneous mass of bonds and 
stocks, notes and prior liens, taking advantage of a period 
of optimistic feeling in the market to float a tremendous 
general mortgage. When this “Readjustment” had been 
successfully put through, the burden was some forty or fifty 
millions larger than before,—where those millions went is 
one of the mysteries to reward that future Carlyle! — but 
the public load was adjusted more trimly. So it was spoken 
of as a “masterly stroke of finance,” and the ex-statesman — 
gained much credit in the highest circles. 

The Senator and the President are excellent men, as 
any financier will tell you. They are charitable and genial, 
social beings, members of clubs, hard working and intelli- 
gent, public spirited, too,—oh, the very best that the Re- 
public breeds! To see Farrington Beals, gray-haired, 
thoughtful, almost the student, clothed in a sober dark suit, 
with a simple flower in the buttonhole, and delicate glasses 
on the bridge of his shapely nose, —to see him modestly 
enter the general offices of the Atlantic and Pacific, any 
one would recognize an Industrial Flywheel of society. To 
accompany him over the system in his car, with a party of 
distinguished foreign stockholders, was in the nature of a 


TOGETHER 85 


religious ceremony, so much the interests of this giant 
property in his care seemed allied with the best interests of 
our great land! 

Thus Beals men ran the road, — men like John Hamilton 
Lane, railroad men to the core, loyal men, devoted to the great 
A.and P. And traffic increased monthly, tonnage mounted, 
wheels turned faster, long freight trains wound their snaky 
coils through the Alleghanies, over the flat prairies, into 
Eastern ports, or Western terminals — Traffic, Traffic! 
And money poured into the treasury, more than enough to 
provide for all those securities that the Senator was so skilled 
in manufacturing. All worked in this blessed land of 
freedom to the glory of Farrington Beals and the profit of 
the great A. and P. 

What has Isabelle to do with all this? Actually she was wit- 
ness to one event, — rather, just the surface of it, the odd-look- 
ing, concrete outside! An afternoon early in her married life 
at Torso, she had gone down to the railroad office to take her 
husband for a drive in the pleasant autumn weather. As 
he was long in coming to meet her, she entered the brick 
building; the elevator boy, recognizing her with a pleasant 
_nod, whisked her up to the floor where Lane had his private 
office. Entering the outer room, which happened to be 
empty at this hour, she heard voices through the half-open 
door that led to the inner office. It was first her husband’s 
voice, so low that she could not hear what he was saying. 
Presently it was interrupted by a passionate treble. Through 
the door she could just see John’s side face where he was seated 
at his desk, —the look she liked best, showing the firm cheek 
and jaw line, and resolute mouth. Over his desk a thin, 
roughly dressed man with a ragged reddish beard was lean- 
ing on both arms, and his shoulders trembled with the 
_ passion of his utterance. 

“Mr. Lane,” he was saying in that passionate treble, “I 
must have them cars — or I shall lose my contract!” 

“As I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Simonds, I have 
done my best for you. I recognize your trouble, and it is 


86 TOGETHER 


most unfortunate,—but there seems to be a shortage of 
coalers just now.” 

“The Pleasant Valley company get all they want!” the 
man blurted out. 

Lane merely drummed on his desk. 

“Tf I can’t get cars to ship my coal, I shall be broke, 
bankrupt,”’ the thin mien cried. 

“T am very sorry — 

“Sorry be damned! Give me some cars!”’ 

“You will have to see Mr. Brundage at St. Louis, ”” Lane 
answered coldly. ‘“ He has final say on such tiattess for the 
Western division. I merely follow orders.” 

He rose and closed his desk. The thin man with an elo- 
quent gesture turned and rushed out of the office, past Isa- 
belle, who caught a glimpse of a white face working, of teeth 
chewing a scrubby mustache, of blood-shot eyes. John 
locked his desk, took down his hat and coat, and came into 
the outer office. He kissed his wife, and they went to drive 
behind the Kentucky horses, talking of pleasant matters. 
After a time, Isabelle asked irrelevantly :— 

“John, why couldn’t you give that man the cars he 
wanted ?”’ 

“Because I had no orders to do so.” 


“But aren’t there cars to be had when the other company ~ 


gets them ?”’ 

“There don’t happen to be any cars for Simonds. The 
road is friendly to Mr. Freke.” 

And he closed his explanation by kissing his wife on her 
pretty neck, as though he would imply that more things than 
kisses go by favor in this world.. Isabelle had exhausted 
her interest in the troubled man’s desire for coal cars, and 
yet in that little phrase, ‘The road is friendly to Mr. Freke,”’ 
she had touched close upon a great secret of the Beals régime. 


Unbeknownst to her, she had just witnessed one of those — 


little modern tragedies as intense in their way as any Cx- 
sarian welter of blood; she had seen a plain little man, one of 
the negligible millions, being ‘‘ squeezed,” in other words the 


Pein bee te 


TOGETHER 87 


operation in an ordinary case of the divine law of survival. 
Freke was to survive; Simonds was not. In what respects 
Simonds was inferior to Freke, the Divine Mind alone could 
say. When that convulsive face shot past Isabelle in Lane’s 
office, it was merely the tragic moment when the conscious 
atom was realizing fully that he was not to be the one to 
survive! The moment when Suspense is converted into 
Despair. ... | 

Nor could Isabelle trace the well-linked chain of cause 
and effect that led from Simonds about-to-be-a-bankrupt 
vid Freke and the Pleasant Valley Coal Company through the 
glory of the A. and P. (incidentally creating in the Senator 
his fine patriotism and faith in the future of his country) 
to her husband’s check-book and her own brilliant little 
‘dinner, “where they could afford to offer champagne.” 
But in the maze of earthly affairs all these unlike matters 
were related, and the relationship is worth our notice, if not 
Isabelle’s. If it had been expounded to her, if she had seen 
certain certificates of Pleasant Valley stock lying snugly 
side by side with Torso Northern bonds and other “good 
things” in her husband’s safe, —and also in the strong 
boxes of Messrs. Beals, Thomas, Stanton, et al., she would 
have said, as she had been brought up to say, “that is my 
husband’s affair.” ... 

The Atlantic and Pacific, under the shrewd guidance of 
the amiable Senator, was a law-abiding citizen, outwardly. 
When the anti-rebate laws were passed, the road reformed; 
it was glad to reform, it made money by reforming. But 
within the law there was ample room for “efficient”? men to 
acquire more money than their salaries, and they naturally 
grasped their opportunities, asdid the general officers. Freke, 
whom Isabelle disliked, with her trivial woman’s prejudice 
about face and manners, embodied a Device, —in other words 
he was an instrument whereby some persons could make a 
profit, a very large profit, at the expense of other persons. 
The A. and P. ‘was friendly to Freke.’ The Pleasant Valley 
Coal Company never wanted cars, and it also enjoyed certain 


88 TOGETHER 


other valuable privileges, covered by the vague term “switch- 
ing,’’ that enabled it to deliver its coal into the gaping hulls 
at tidewater at seventy to eighty cents per ton cheaper than 
any of its competitors in the Torso district. No wonder 
that the Pleasant Valley company, with all this “friendliness ”’ 
of the A. and P., prospered, and that Mr. Freke, under one 
name or another, swallowed presently, at a bargain, the little 
mine that the man Simonds had struggled to operate, as well 
as thousands of acres of bituminous coal lands along the 
Pleasant River, and along the Torso Northern road. (Per- 
haps the inwardness of that Inspection Party can now be 
seen, also.) The signs of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company 
and its aliases squatted here and there all through the Torso 
coal region. As the Senator would say, it was a very suc- 
cessful business, ‘‘thanks to the initiative of Mr. Freke.” 
And that poor Simonds, who had amply demonstrated his 
inability to survive, his utter lack of adaptation to his 
environment, by not being able to be friendly with the great 
A. and P., went — where all the inefficient, non-adaptable 
human refuse goes —to the bottom. Bien entendu! 

Freke was the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, —that is, 
he was its necessary physiognomy, —but really the coal 
company was an incorporated private farm of the officers 
and friends of the A. and P., —an immensely profitable farm. 
Lane in his callow youth did not know this fact ; but he learned — 
it after he had been in Torso a few weeks. He was quick to 
learn, a typical Beals man, thoroughly “efficient,” one who 
could keep his eyes where they belonged, his tongue in his 
mouth, and his ears open. As he told Isabelle that Sunday 
afternoon, “he had had many business dealings with Freke,”’ 
alias the Pleasant Valley Company, etc., and they had been 
uniformly profitable. 

For the fatherly Senator and the shrewd Beals believed 
that the “right sort”? should make a “good thing”; they 
believed in thrift. In a word, to cut short this lengthy 
explanation, the great Atiantic and Pacific, one of the two 
or three most efficiently operated railroads in the United 


TOGETHER 89 


States, was honeycombed with that common thing “ graft,” 
or private “initiative”! From the President’s office all the 
way down to subordinates in the traffic department, there 
were “good things” to be enjoyed. In that growing bunch 
‘of securities that Lane was accumulating in his safe, there 
were, as has been said, a number of certificates of stock in 
coal companies — and not small ones. 

“And this is why Lane maintained social as well as financial 
relations with the coarse Mr. Freke. And this is why, also, 
Lane felt that they could afford “the best,’ when they 
undertook to give a dinner to the distinguished gentlemen 
from New York. Of course he did not explain all this to 
Isabelle that pleasant Sunday afternoon. Would Isabelle 
have’ comprehended it, if he had? Her mind would have 
wandered off to another dinner, to that cottage at Bed- 
mouth, which she thought of taking for the summer, or to 
the handsome figure that John made on horseback. At least 
nine out of ten American husbands would have treated the 
matter as Lane did, — given some sufficient general answer 
to their wives’ amateurish curiosity about business and paid 
their figures due compliments, and thought complacently of 
the comfortable homes to which they were progressing and the 
cheerful dinners therein, — all, wife, home, dinner, the result 
of their fortunate adaptation to the environments they found 
themselves in... . 

Perhaps may be seen by this time the remote connec- 
tion between that tragic gesture of Frank Simonds on the 
Saturday afternoon, calling on heaven and the Divine Mind 
that pitilessly strains its little creatures through the holes of 
a mighty colander — between that tragic gesture, I say, 

and Isabelle’s delightful dinner of ten courses, — champagne 
and terrapin ! 

| _ But this tiresome chapter on the affairs of the Atlantic 

and Pacific railroad, — will it never, be done! So sordid, 

so commonplace, so newspapery, so —just what everything 

in life is — when we might have expected for the dollar and 





90 TOGETHER 


a quarter expended on this pound of wood pulp and ink, — 
something less dull than a magazine article; something 
about a motor-car and a girl with a mischievous face whom 
a Russian baron seeks to carry away by force and is barely 
thwarted by the brave American college youth dashing in pur- 
suit with a new eighty h. p., etc., etc. Or at least if one must 
have a railroad in a novel (when every one knows just what 
a railroad is), give us a private car and the lovely daughter 
of the President together with a cow-punching hero, as in 
Bessie’s beloved story. But an entire chapter on graft and 
a common dinner-party with the champagne drunk so long 
ago — what a bore! 

And yet in the infinite hues of this our human life, the 
methods by which our substantial hero, John Hamilton 
Lane, amassed his fortune, are worthy of contemplation. 
There is more, O yawning reader, in the tragic gestuie of 
ragged-bearded Frank Simonds than in some tons of your 
favorite brand of “real American women’’; more in the 
sublime complacency of Senator Alonzo Thomas, when he 
praised “that great and good man,” and raised to his memory 
his glass of Pommery brut, triple sec, thanin all the adven- 
tures of soldiers of fortune or yellow cars or mysterious yachts 
or hectic Russian baronesses; more — at least for the pur- 
pose of this history — in John’s answer to Isabelle’s random 
inquiry that Sunday afternoon than in all the “heart-in- 
terest’? you have absorbed in a twelvemonth. For in the 
atmosphere of the Acts here recorded, you and I, my reader, 
live and have our being, such as it is — and also poor Frank 
Simonds (who will never appear again to trouble us). And 
to the seeing eye, mystery and beauty lie in the hidden 
meaning of things seen but not known... . . 

Patience! We move to something more intimate and 
domestic, if not more thrilling. 


CHAPTER XI 


Tue child was coming! 

When Isabelle realized it, she had a shock, as if some- 
thing quite outside her had suddenly interposed in her 
affairs. That cottage at Bedmouth for the summer would 
have to be given up and other plans as well. At first she 
had reftised to heed the warning, —allowed John to go away 
to New York on business without confiding in him, —at last 
accepted it regretfully. Since the terrifying fear those first 
days in the Adirondack forest lest she might have conceived 
without her passionate consent, the thought of children had 
gradually slipped out of her mind.. They had settled into 
a comfortable way of living, with their plans and their 
expectations. “That side of life,” as she called it, was still 
distasteful to her, —she did not see why it had to be. For- 
tunately it did not play a large part in their life, and the 
other, the companionable thing, the being admired and 
petted, quite satisfied her. Children, of course, some- 
time; but “not just yet.” 

“Tt will be the wrong time, —September, —spoil every- 
thing!”’ she complained to Bessie. 

“Oh, it’s always the wrong time, no matter when it hap- 
pens. But you’ll get used to it. Rob had to keep me from 
going crazy at first. But in the end you like it.” 

“Tt settles Bedmouth this year!”’ 

“It is a bore,”’ Bessie agreed sympathetically, feeling sorry 
for herself, as she was to have spent six weeks with Isabelle. 
“Tt takes a year out of a woman’s life, of course, no matter 
how she is situated. And I’m so fearfully ugly all the time. 
But you won’t be, — your figure is better.” 

Bessie, like most childlike persons, took short views 


Q1 . 
I. a 


92 TOGETHER 


of immediate matters. She repeated her idea of child- © 


bearing : — 
“J hated it each time, — especially the last time. It did 


seem so unnecessary —for us. ... And it spoils your 


love, being so afraid. But when it comes, why you like it, 
of course !”’ 

John arrived from, his hurried trip to New York, smiling 
with news. He did not notice his wife’s dejected appearance 


when he kissed her, in his eagerness to tell something. 


“There is going to be a shake-up in the road,” he an-— 


nounced. ‘“That’s why they sent for me.” 

“Ts there?” she asked listlessly. 

“Well, I am slated for fourth Vice-president. They were 
pleased to say handsome things about what I have done 
at Torso. Guess they heard of that offer from the D. 
and O.” 

“What is fourth Vice-president ?’’ Isabelle inquired. 

“In charge of traffic west — headquarters at St. Louis!” 

He expected that his wife would be elated at this fulfilment 
of her desires; but instead Isabelle’s eyes unaccountably 
filled with tears. When he understood, he was still more 
mystified at her dejection. Very tenderly holding her in 
his arms, he whispered his delight into her ears. His face 


was radiant; it was far greater news than his promotion to | 


the fourth vice-presidency of the A. and P. 


“And you knew all this time!” he exclaimed reproach- — 


fully. 
“JT wasn’t sure!” 
He seemed to take the event as natural and joyful, which 


irritated her still more. As Bessie had said, “ Whatever ties a — 





- woman to the home, makes her a piece of domestic furniture, _ 


the men seem to approve of!” 

“What a fright I look already!’ Isabelle complained, 
gazing at the dark circles under her eyes in the glass. She 
thought of Aline, whose complexion like a Jacqueminot rose 


had been roughened and marred. Something still virginal 8 


in her soul rebelled against it all. 





TOGETHER 98 


“Oh, not so bad,” Lane protested. “ You are just a little 
pinched. You’ll be fitter than ever when it’s over!” 

The man doesn’t care, she thought mutinously. It seems 
to him the proper thing,— what woman is made for. Isabelle 
was conscious that she was made for much more, for her own 
_ joy and her own activity, and she hated to part with even a 
little of it! 

He could not understand her attitude. As a man he had 
retained the primitive joy in the coming of the child, any 
child, — but his child and the first one above all! Compared 
with that nothing was of the least importance. Seeing her 
pouting into the glass, he said reproachfully : — 

“But you like children, Belle!” 

And taking her again into his arms and kissing her, he 
added, ‘We'll give the little beggar a royal welcome, 
girl!” 

His grave face took on a special look of content with the 
world and his share in it, while Isabelle continued to stare 
at herself in the glass and think of the change a child would 
make in her life. Thus the woman of the new generation, 
with her eagerness for a “large, full life,” feels towards that 
process of nature for which the institution of marriage was 
primarily designed. 


So for a time longer Isabelle tried to ignore the coming fact, 
to put it out of her mind, and grasp as much of her own 
life as she could before the life within her should deprive 
her of freedom. As Lane’s new duties would not begin 
until the summer, it was arranged that Isabelle should 
spend the hot weeks at the Grafton farm with her mother, 
and then return to St. Louis for her confinement in 
her old home. Later they would settle themselves in 
the city at their leisure. ... It was all so provoking, 
Isabelle persisted in thinking. They might have had at 
least a year of freedom in which ‘to settle themselves in 
the new home. And she had had visions of a few months 
in Europe with Vickers, who was now in Rome. John 


94 TOGETHER 


might have come over after her. To give up all this for 
what any woman could do at any time! 

As the months passed she could not evade the issue. By 
the time she was settled in her old room at the Farm she 
had grown anzmic, nervous. The coming of the child 
had sapped rather than created strength as it properly 
should have done. White and wasted she lay for long hours 
on the lounge near the window where she could see the 
gentle green hills. Here her cousin Alice Johnston found 
her, when she arrived with her children to make Mrs. Price 
a visit. The large, placid woman knelt by Isabelle’s side 
and gathered her in her arms. 

“T’m so glad, dear! When is it to be?” 

“Oh, sometime in the fall,’’ Isabelle replied vaguely, 
bored that her condition already revealed itself. ‘ Did 
you want the first one?” she asked after a time. 

“Well, not at the very first. You see it was just so much 
more of arisk. Andour marriage was a risk without that... . 
I hated the idea of becoming a burden for Steve. But — 
with you it will be so different, from the start. And then 
it always makes its own place, you see. When it comes, 
you will think you always wanted it!” 

She smiled in her large human way, as if she had tested 
the trials of life and found that all held some sweet. Isa- 
belle looked down ,at her thin arms. The Johnstons had 
four, and they were so poor! As if divining her thought, 
Alice said:— . 

“Every time I wondered how we were going to survive, 
but somehow we did. And now it will all be well, with 
Steve’s new position — ”’ 

“What is that?” 

“Hasn’t John told you? It has just been settled; Steve 
is going into the A. and P.,— John’s assistant in St. Louis.” 

“T’m so glad for you,” Isabelle responded listlessly. She 
recalled now something that her husband had said about 
Johnston being a good man, who hadn’t had his chance, 
and that he hoped to do something for him. 





TOGETHER 95 


“Tremendous rise in salary,—four thousand,’ Alice 
continued buoyantly. ‘We shan’t know what to do with 
all that money! We can give the children the best educa- 
tion.” 

Isabelle reflected that John’s salary had been five thou- 
sand at Torso, and as fourth Vice-president would be ten 
thousand. And she still had her twenty-five hundred dol- “ 
lars of allowance from her father. Alice’s elation over Steve’s 
rise gave her a sudden appreciation of her husband’s 
growing power, — his ability to offer a struggling man his 
chance. Perhaps he could do something for the Falkners 
also. The thought took her out of herself for a little while. 
Men were free to work out their destiny in life, to go hither 
and thither, to alter fate. Buta woman had to bear children. 
John was growing all this time, and she was separated from 
him. She tried to believe that this was the reason for her 
discontent, this separation from her husband; but she 
knew that when she had been perfectly free, she had not 
shared largely in his activity. 

“You must tell me all about the St. Mary’ s girls,’’ Alice 
said. ‘Have you seen Aline?” 

“Yes, —she has grown very faddy, I should think, — 
arts and crafts and all that. Isn’t it queer? I asked her 
to visit us, but she has another one coming,— the third!” 

Isabelle made a little grimace. 

“And Margaret?” 

“She has suddenly gone abroad with her husband — to 
Munich. He’s given up his business. Didn’t her marriage 
surprise you?” 

“Yes, I thought she was going to marry that Englishman 
who was at your wedding.”’ 

“Mr. Hollenby? Yes, every one did. Something hap- 
pened. Suddenly she became engaged to this Pole,—a 
New York man. Very well connected, and has money, I 
hear. Conny wrote me about him.” ... 

So they gossiped on. When Alice rose to leave her, 
Isabelle held her large cool hand in hers. The older woman, 


96 TOGETHER 


whose experience had been so unlike hers, so difficult, 
soothed her, gave her a suggestion of other kinds of living 
than her own little life. 

“T’m glad you are here,” she said. “Come in often, 
won’t you?” 

And her cousin, leaning over to kiss her as she might a 
fretful child who had much to learn, murmured, “Of 
course, dear. It will be all right!” 


CHAPTER XII 


THE Steve Johnstons had had a hard time, as Isabelle 
would have phrased it. 

He had been a faithful, somewhat dull and plodding 
student at the technical school, where he took the civil en- 
gineering degree, and had gone forth to lay track in Montana. 
He laid it well; but this job finished, there seemed no per- 
manent place for him. He was heavy and rather tongue- 
tied, and made no impression on his superiors except that 
of commonplace efficiency. He drifted into Canada, then 
back to the States, and finally found a place in Detroit. 

Here, while working for thirty dollars a week, he met 
Alice Johnston, —she also was earning her living, being 
unwilling to accept from the Colonel more than the means 
for her education, — and from the first he wished to marry 
her, attracted by her gentle, calm beauty, her sincerity, 
and buoyant, healthy enjoyment of life. She was teaching 
in a girls’ school, and was very happy. Other women had 
always left the heavy man on the road, so to speak, marking 
him as stupid. But Alice Johnston was keener or kinder 
than most young women: she perceived beneath the large 
body a will, an intelligence, a character, merely inhibited 
in their envelope of large bones and solid flesh, with an 
entire absence of nervous system. He was silent before 
the world, but not foolish, and with her he was not long 
silent. She loved him, and she consented to marry him 
on forty dollars a week, hope‘ully planning to add some- 
thing from her teaching to the budget, until Steve’s slow 
power might gain recognition. 

“So we married,” she said to Isabelle, recounting her 
little life history in the drowsy summer afternoon. “And 

we were so happy on what we had! It was real love. We 
4 H 97 


98 TOGETHER 


took a little flat a long way out of the city, and when | 
came home afternoons from the school, I got the dinner 
and Steve cooked the breakfasts, — he’s a splendid cook, 
learned on the plains. It all went merrily the first months, 
though Aunt. Harmony thought I was such a iool to marry, 
you remember?”’ She laughed, and Isabelle smiled at the 
memory of the caustic comments which Mrs. Price had 
-made when Alice Vance, a poor niece, had dared to marry 
a poor man, — ‘‘They’ll be coming to your father for help 
before the year is out,’ she had said. But they hadn’t 
gone to the Colonel yet. 

“Then little Steve came, and I had to leave the school 
and stay at home. That was hard, but I had saved enough 
to pay for the doctor and the nurse. Then that piece of 
track elevation was finished and Steve was out of work for 
a couple of months. He tried so hard, poor boy! But 
he was never meant to be an engineer. I knew that, of 
course, all along. ... Well, the baby came, and if it 
hadn’t been for my savings, — why, I should have gone to 
the hospital! 

“ Just then Steve met a man he had known at the Tech, 
and was given that place on a railroad as clerk in the traffic 
department. He was doubtful about taking it, but I wasn’t. 
I was sure it would open up, and even twenty-five dollars 
a week is something. So he left for Cleveland a week after 
the baby was born, and somehow I packed up and followed 
with the baby bk I could. 

“That wasn’t the end of hard times by any means. You 
see Ned came the next year,—we’re such healthy, normal 


specimens!’’? She laughed heartily at this admission oi 
her powers of maternity. ‘And it wasn’t eighteen months 
before Alice was coming. ... Oh, I know that we belong 


to the thriftless pauper class that’s always having children, — 
more than it can properly care for. We ought to be dis- 
couraged! But somehow we have fed and clothed ’em all, 
and we couldn’t spare one of the kiddies. There’s James, 
too, you know. He came last winter, just after Steve had 


TOGETHER 99 


the grippe and pneumonia; that was a pull. But it 
doesn’t seem right to —to keep them from coming — and 
when you love each other — ”’ 

Her eyes shone with a certain joy as she frankly stated 
the woman’s problem, while Isabelle looked away, embar- 
rassed. Mrs. Johnston continued in her simple manner :— 

“Tf Nature doesn’t want us to have them, why does she 
give us the power? ... I know that is wretched politi- 
cal economy and that Nature really has nothing to do 
with the modern civilized family. But as I see other women, 
the families about me, those that are always worrying over 
having children, trying to keep out of it, — why, they don’t 
seem to be any better off. And it is— well, undig- 
nified, — not nice, you know. ... We can’t spare ’em, 
nor any more that may come! ... As I said, I believed 
all along that Steve had it in him, that his mind and char- 
acter must tell, and though it was discouraging to have 
men put over him, younger men too, at last the railroad 
found out what he could do.” 

Her face beamed with pride. 

“You see Steve has a remarkable power of storing things 
up in that big head of his. Remembers a lot of pesky little 
detail when he’s once fixed his mind on it, — the prices of 
things, figures, and distances, and rates and differentials. 
Mr. Mason — that was the traffic manager of our road — 
happened to take Steve to Buffalo with him about some 
rate-making business. Steve, it turned out, knew the 
situation better than all the traffic managers. He coached 
Mr. Mason, and so our road got something it wanted. It 
was about the lumber rate, in competition with Canadian 
roads. Mr. Mason made Steve his assistant — did you 
ever think what an awful lot the rate on lumber might 
mean to you and yours? It’s a funny world. Because 
Steve happened to be there and knew that with a rate of 
so much a thousand feet our road. could make money, — 
why, we had a house to live in for the first time! 

“Of course,” she bubbled, “it isn’t just that. It’s Steve’s 


100 TOGETHER 


head, — an ability to find his way through those great 
sheets of figures the railroads are always compiling. He 
stores the facts up in that big round head and pulls ’em out 
when they are wanted. Why, he can tell you just what 
it would cost to ship a car of tea from Seattle to New 
York!” 

Isabelle had a vision of Steve Johnston’s large, heavy 
head with its thick, black hair, and she began to feel a 
respect for the stolid man. 

“John said he had great ability,” she remarked. “I’m 
so glad it all came out right in the end.” 

“T had my first servant when the promotion came, and 
that spring we took a little house, —it was crowded in 
the flat, and noisy.” 

“You will find it so much easier now, and you will like 
St. Louis.’’ 

“Oh, yes! But it hasn’t been really bad, — the struggle, 
the being poor. You see we were both well and strong, 
and we loved so much, and we always had the problem of 
how to live,— that draws you together if you have the real 
thing in you. It isn’t sordid trying to see what a quarter 
can be made to do. It’s exciting.” 

As she recalled the fight, a tender smile illuminated her 
face and curved her lips upward. To her poverty had not 
been limiting, grinding, but an exhilarating fight that taxed 
her resources of mind and body. 

‘Of course there are a lot of things you can’t have. But 
most people have more than they know how to handle, 
no matter where they are!”’ 

Isabelle was puzzled by this remark, ang explained Alice 
Johnston’s content by her age, her lack of experience, at 
least such experience as she had had. For lie to her pre- 
sented a tantalizing feast of opportunities, and it was her in- 
tention to grasp as many of these as one possibly could. Any 
other view of living seemed not only foolish but small- 
minded. Without any snobbishness she considered that 
her sphere and her husband’s could not be compared with 


TOGETHER 101 


the Johnstons’. The Lanes, she felt, were somehow called 
to large issues. 

Nevertheless, Isabelle could understand that Alice’s mar- 
riage was quite a different thing from what hers was, — 
something to glorify all the petty, sordid details, to vivify 
the grimy struggle of keeping one’s head above the social 
waters. 

“Now,” Alice concluded, ““we can save! And start the 
children fairly. But I wonder it we shall ever be any hap- 
pier than we have been, — any closer, Steve and I?” 

Alice, by her very presence, her calm acceptance of life 
as it shaped itself, soothed Isabelle’s restlessness, suggested 
trust and confidence. 

“You are a dear,’”’ she whispered to her cousin. “I am 
so glad you are to be near me in St. Louis!” 


CHAPTER XIII 


ISABELLE saw the fat headlines in the Pittsburg paper 
that the porter brought her, — ‘Congressman Darnell 
and his wife killed!’? The bodies had been found at the 
bottom of an abandoned quarry. It was supposed that 
during a thunder-storm the night before, as he was driving 
from Torso to his farm in company with his wife, the horses 
had become uncontrollable and had dashed into the pit 
before Darnell could pull them up. He had just taken his 
seat in Congress. Isabelle remembered that he called the 
day before she left Torso, and when she had congratulated 
him on his election, had said jokingly: ‘‘Now I shall get 
after your husband’s bosses, Mrs. Lane. We shan’t be on 
speaking terms when next we meet.’’ He seemed gay and 
vital. So it had ended thus for the tempestuous Kentuck- 
Peete, 

John was waiting for her at the station in Torso, where 
she was to break the journey. His face was eager and solici- 
tous. He made many anxious inquiries about her health 
and the journey. But she put it all to one side. 

“Tell me about the Darnells. Isn’t it dreadful!’ 

“Yes,” he said slowly, ‘it is very bad.” lLane’s voice 
was grave, as if he knew more than the published report. _ 

“How could it have happened, — he was such a good driver ? 
He must have been drunk.’ 

“Tom Darnell could have driven all right, even if he had 
been drunk. I am afraid it’s worse than that.” 

“Tell me!” 

“There are all sorts of rumors. He came up from Wash- — 
ington unexpectedly, and his wife met him at the station 
with their team. They went to the hotel first, and then — 
suddenly started for the farm in the midst of the storm. It~ 

102 


TOGETHER 103 


was a terrible storm. ... One story is that he had trouble 
with a bank; it is even said he had forged paper. I don’t 
know! ... Another story was about the Adams woman, 
— you know she followed him to Washington. ... Too 
bad! He was a brilliant fellow, but he tied himself all up, 
tied himself all up,” he observed sententiously, thus ex- 
plaining the catastrophe of an unbalanced character. 
“You mean it was —suicide?’’ Isabelle questioned. 

“ Looks that way!” 

“How awful! and his wife killed, too!” 

“He was always desperate — uncontrolled sort of fellow. 
You remember how he went off the handle the night of 
our dinner.” 

“So he ended it — that way,’’ she murmured. 

And she saw the man driving along the road in the black 
storm, his young wife by his side, with desperate purpose. 
She remembered his words in the orchard, his wistful desire 
for another kind of life. ‘The Adams woman, too,” as 
John expressed it, and “he couldn’t hold his horses.’’ This 
nature had flown in pieces, liked a cracked wheel, in the 
swift revolution of life. To her husband it was only one 
of the messes recorded in the newspapers. But her mind 
was full of wonder and fear. As little as she had known the 
man, she had felt an interest in him altogether dispropor- 
tionate to what he said or did. He was a man of possibili- 
ties, of streaks, of moods, one that could have been powerful, 
lived a rich life. And at thirty-three he had come to the 
end, where his passions and his ideals in perpetual warfare 
had held him bound. He had cut the knot! And she 
had chosen to go with him, the poor, timid wife! .. . 
Surely there were strange elements in people, Isabelle felt, 
not commonly seen in her little well-ordered existence, traits 
of character covered up before the world, fissures running back 
through the years into old impulses. Life might be terrible 
— when it got beyond your hand. She could not dismiss 
poor Tom Darnell as summarily as John did, — “a bad 
lot, I’m afraid! ” 


104 TOGETHER 


“You mustn’t think anything more about it,” her hus- 
band said anxiously, as she sat staring before her, trying to 
comprehend the tragedy. “I have arranged to take you on 
to-morrow. The Colonel writes that your brother Ezra is 
seedy, — touch of malaria, he thinks. The Colonel is look- 
ing forward a lot to your coming.” 

He talked on about the little domestic things, but she 
held that picture in the background of her mind and some- 
thing within her said over and over, ‘Why should it be 
like that for any one!’ . 

And all the next day, on their way to St. Louis, she could 
not dismiss the thought from her mind: ‘Why, I saw 
him only a few weeks ago. How well he read that poetry, 
as if he enjoyed it! And what he said that night at dinner 
he really meant, —oh, he believed it! And he was sorry 
for his wife, — yes, I am sure he was sorry for her. But he 
loved the other woman, —she understood him. And so 
he ended it. It’s quite dreadful!’ 


The Colonel met them at the station with his new motor. 
His face was a bit grave as he ‘said in answer to their 
inquiry : — 

“No, it is not malaria, Iam afraid. The doctors think it 
is typhoid. There has been a great deal of it in the city this 
summer, and the boy wouldn’t take a vacation, was afraid 
I would stay here if he did. So I went up to Pelee, instead.” 

It was typhoid, and young Price died within the week. 
In the hush that followed the death of her brother Isabelle 
lay waiting for the coming of her child. ... Her older 
brother Ezra! He was like a sturdy young tree in the forest, | 
scarce noticed in the familiar landscape until his loss. Quiet, 
hard-working “Junior,” as the family called him, — what 
would the Colonel do without him? The old man — now 
he was obviously old even to Isabelle — would come to her 
room and sit for long hours silent, as if he, too, was waiting 
for the coming of the new life into his house. 

These two deaths so unlike, the tragic end of Darnell and 


TOGETHER 105 


her brother’s sudden removal, sank deep into her, sounding 
to her in the midst of her own childish preoccupation with 
her own life, the intricacy, the mystery of all existence. 
Life was larger than a private garden hedged with personal 
ambitions. She was the instrument of forces outside her 
being. And in her weakness she shrank into herself. 

They told her that she had given birth to a daughter — 
another being like herself! 











ou), ; 


Vay 
a 





CHAPTER XIV 


CoLONEL PRICE was a great merchant, one of those men 
who have been the energy, the spirit of the country since 
the War, now fast disappearing, giving way to another 
type in this era of “finance” as distinguished from “ busi- 
ness.”’ When the final review was ended, and he was free 
to journey back to the little Connecticut village where three 
years before he had left with his parents his young wife and 
their one child, he was a man just over thirty, very poor, 
and weak from a digestive complaint that troubled him 
all his life. But the spirit of the man was unbroken. Tak- 
ing his little family with him, he moved to St. Louis, and 
falling in there with a couple of young men with like metal 
to himself, who happened also to possess some capital, he 
started the wholesale hardware business of Parrott, Price, 
and Co., which rapidly became the leading house in that 
branch of trade throughout the new West. The capital 
belonged to the other men, but the leadership from the start 
to Colonel Price. It was his genius as a trader, a diviner 
of needs, as an organizer, that within twenty years created 
the immense volume of business that rolled through the 
doors of their old warehouse. During the early years the 
Colonel was the chief salesman and spent his days “on the 
road”’ up and down the Mississippi Valley, sleeping in rough 
country taverns, dining on soda biscuit and milk, driving 
many miles over clayey, rutty roads, — dealing with men, 
making business. 

Meanwhile the wife —her maiden name was Harmony 
Vickers —was doing her part in that little brick house 
which the Colonel had taken Lane to.see. There she worked 
and saved, treating her husband’s money like a sacred fund 
to be treasured. When the colonel came home from his 

109 . 


110 TOGETHER 


weekly trips, he helped in the housework, and nursed the 
boy through the croup at night, saving his wife where he 
could. It was long after success had begun to look their 
way before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the 
wooden cottage on a quiet cross street that the Colonel 
wanted to buy, or employ more than one servant. But the 
younger children as they came on, first Vickers, then Isa- 
belle, insensibly changed the family habits, —also the 
growing wealth and luxury of their friends, and the fast 
increasing income of the Colonel, no longer to be disguised. 
Yet when they built that lofty brick house in the older 
quarter of the city, she would have but two servants and 
used sparingly the livery carriage that her husband insisted 
on providing for her. The habit of fearsome spending never ~ 
could wholly be eradicated. When the Colonel had become 
one of the leading merchants of the city, she consented 
grudgingly to the addition of one servant, also a coachman 
and a single pair of horses, although she preferred the street- 
cars on the next block as safer and less troublesome; and 
she began gradually to entertain her neighbors, to satisfy 
the Colonel’s hospitable instincts, in the style in which they — 
entertained her. 

Mrs. Price had an enormous pride in the Colonel and in 
his reputation in St. Louis, a pride that no duke’s wife could 
exceed. It was the Colonel who had started the movement 
for a Commercial Association and was its first president. 
As his wife she had entertained under her roof a President 
of the United States, not to mention a Russian prince and 
an English peer. It was the Colonel, as she told her children, 
who had carried through the agitation for a Water Com- 
mission; who urged the Park system; who saved the Second 
National Bank from failure in the panic days of ninety- 
three. She knew that he might have been governor, sena- — 
tor, possibly vice-president, if it had not been for his modesty 
and his disinclination to dip into the muddy pool of politics. 
As she drove into the city on her errands she was proudly 
conscious that she was the wife of the best-known private 





TOGETHER i 


citizen, and as such recognized by every important. resi- 
dent and every quick-witted clerk in the stores where she 
dealt. To be plain Mrs. Ezra Price was ample reward for 
all the hardship and deprivation of those beginning years! 

She was proud, too, of the fact that the money which 
she spent was honest money. For the hardware merchant 
belonged to the class that made its fortunes honestly, in 
the eye of the Law and of Society, also. Although latterly 
his investments had carried him into real estate, railroads, 
and banks, nevertheless it was as the seller of hardware 
that he wished to be known. He was prouder of the Lion 
brand of tools than of all his stock holdings. And though 
for many years a director in the Atlantic and Pacific and 
other great corporations, he had always resolutely refused 
to be drawn into the New York whirlpool; he was an Ameri- 


can merchant and preferred to remain such all his life rather 


than add a number of millions to his estate “by playing 


-faro in Wall Street.”’ 


The American merchant of this sort is fast disappearing, 
alas! As a class it has never held that position in the East 
that it had in the West. In the older states the manufac- 
turer and the speculator have had precedence. Fortunes 


‘built on slaves and rum and cotton have brought more 


honor than those made in groceries and dry goods. Odd 
snobbery of trade! But in that broad, middle ground of 
the country, its great dorsal column, the merchant found 
his field, after the War, to develop and civilize. The char- 
acter of those pioneers in trade, men from Vermont, New 
Hampshire, and Maine, was such as to make them leaders. 
They were brave and unselfish, faithful, and trusting of the 


future. With the plainest personal habits and _ tastes, 


taking no tarnish from the luxury that rose about them, 
seeing things larger than dollars on their horizon, they 


_ made the best aristocracy that this country has seen. Their 


eee. . 


coat of arms bore the legend: Integrity and Enterprise. 
For their fortunes were built not speculatively, but on 
the ancient principles of trade, of barter between men, which 


112 TOGETHER 


is to divine needs and satisfy them, and hence they are the 
only fortunes in our rich land that do not represent, to some 
degree, human blood, the sacrifice of the many for the few. 
They were not fattened on a protective tariff, nor dug in wild 
speculation out of the earth, nor gambled into being over 
night on the price of foodstuffs, nor stolen from government 
lands, nor made of water in Wall Street. These merchants 
earned them, as the pedler earns the profit of his pack, as 
the farmer reaps the harvest of his seed. They earned them 
by labor and sagacity, and having them, they stood with 
heads erect, looking over their world and knowing that such 
as it is they helped to build it. 
_- The day of the great merchant has already gone. Already 
the names of these honorable firms are mere symbols, cloak- 
ing corporate management, trading on the old personalities. 
No one saw the inevitable drift clearer than Colonel Price. 
In common with his class he cherished the desire of handing 
on the structure that he had built to the next generation, 
with the same sign-manual over the door, — to his son and 
his grandson. So he had resisted the temptation to incorpo- 
rate the business and “take his profits.” There was a son 
to sit in his seat. The sons of the other partners would not 
be fit: Starbird’s only son, after a dissipated youth, was 
nursing himself somewhere on the Riviera; his daughter 
had married an Kasterner, and beyond the quarterly check 
which the daughter and son received from the business, this 
family no longer had a share init. As for Parrott there was 
a younger son serving somewhere in the immense establish- 
ment, but he had already proved his amiable incapacity for 
responsibility. The second generation, as the Colonel was 
forced to admit, was a disappointment. Somehow these mer- 
chants had failed to transmit the iron in their blood to their 
children. The sons and sons-in-law either lacked ability and 
grit, or were frankly degenerate, — withered limbs! 

With the Colonel it had promised to be different; that 
first boy he had left behind when he went to the War had 
grown up under his eye, was saturated with the business 


> TOGETHER 112 


idea. Young Ezra had preferred to leave the military 
academy where he had been at school and enter the store at 
eighteen. At twenty-six he had been made treasurer of the 
firm, only a few months before his death. . . . The Colonel’s 
thin figure bent perceptibly after that autumn of ninety- 
seven. He erected a pseudo-Greek temple in Fairview 
Cemetery, with the name Price cut in deep Roman letters 
above the door, to hold the ashes of his son,— then devoted 
all his energies to measures for sanitary reform in the city. 
He was a fighter, even of death... . 

Vickers had cabled at once when the news reached him 
that he was sailing for home. He and Isabelle had inherited 
their mother’s nervous constitution and had come later in 
the family fortunes. They had known only ease and luxury, 
tempered as it was by their father’s democratic simplicity 
and their mother’s plain tastes. Insensibly they had 
' acquired the outlook of the richer generation, the sense of 
freedom to do with themselves what they pleased. Both 
had been sent East to school, — to what the Colonel had been 
told were the best schools, —and Vickers had gone to a 
great university. 

There for a time the boy had tried to compete in athletics, 
as the one inevitable path of ambition for an American boy 
at college; but realizing soon that he was too slightly built 
for this field, he had drifted into desultory reading and 
sketching for the college comic paper. Then a social talent 
and a gift for writing music gave him the composition of the 
score for the annual musical play. This was a hit, and from 
that time he began to think seriously of studying music. 
It was agreed in the family that after his graduation he 
should go abroad “to see what he could do.’ Ezra had 
already taken his place in the hardware business, and the 
younger son could be spared for the ornamental side of life, 
all the more as he was delicate in health and had not shown 
the slightest evidence of “ practical ability.”’ So the summer 
that he took his degree, a creditable degree with honors in 
music, the Prices sailed for Europe to undertake one of those 

I 


114 TOGETHER 


elaborate tasting tours of foreign lands that well-to-do 
American families still ‘essay. In the autumn it concluded 
by the Colonel’s establishing the family in Munich and 
returning to his affairs. Vickers had been in Europe most of 
the time since, living leisurely, studying, writing “little 
things” that Isabelle played over for the Colonel on the 
piano. 


Now he had come home at the family -call, —an odd 
figure it must be confessed in St. Louis, with his little pointed 
beard, and thin mustache, his fondness for flowing neckwear 
and velveteen waistcoats, his little canes and varnished 
boots. And he stayed on; for the family seemed to 
need him, in a general way, though it was not clear to him 
what good he could do to them and there were tempting 
reasons for returning to Rome. In spite of the sadness of 
the family situation the young man could not repress his 
humorous sense of the futility of all hopes built upon 
himself. 

“Just think of me selling nails,’ —he always referred 
to the hardware business as “selling nails,’ —he said to 
his mother when she spoke to him of the Colonel’s hope that 
he would try to take his brother’s place. “ All I know about 
business is just enough to draw a check if the bank will 
keep the account straight. Poor Colonel! That germ 
ought to have got me instead of Junior!” | 

“You owe it to your father, Vick. You can’t be more 
useless than Bob Parrott, and your father would like to 
see you in the office — for a time any way.” 

Vickers refrained from saying that there was an unmen- 
tioned difference between him and Bob Parrott. Young 
Parrott had never shown the desire to do anything, except play 
polo; while he might, — at least he had the passion for other 
things. The family, he thought, took his music very lightly, | 
as a kind of elegant toy that should be put aside at the first 
call of real duty. Perhaps he had given them reason by his 
slow preparation, his waiting on the fulness of time and his 


TOGETHER 115 


own development to produce results for the world to see. 
Isabelle alone voiced a protest against this absorption of 
the young man into the family business. 

“Why, he has his own life! It is too much of a sacrifice,” 
she remonstrated. 

“Nothing that can give your father comfort is too much 
of a sacrifice,’ Mrs. Price replied sharply. 

“It can’t last long,’’ Isabelle said to Vickers. ‘The 
Colonel will see, —he is generous.”’ 

“He will see that I am no good fast enough!” 

“He will understand what you are giving up, and he is 
too large hearted to want other people to do what they are 
not fitted to do.” 

“T don’t suppose that the family fortunes need my strong 
right arm exactly ?”’ the young man inquired. 

“Of course not! It’s the sentiment, don’t you see?” 

“Yes, of course, the sentiment for nails!”’ the young man 
accepted whimsically. ‘Poor Junior did the sentiment as 
well as the business so admirably, and I shall be such a 
hollow bluff at both, I fear.” 

Nevertheless, the next morning Vickers was at breakfast 
on time, and when the Colonel’s motor came around at 
eight-thirty, he followed his father into the hall, put on-an 
unobtrusive black hat, selected a sober pair of gloves, and 
leaving his little cane behind him took the seat beside his 
father. Their neighbor in the block was getting into his 
brougham at the same moment. 

“Alexander Harmon,” the Colonel explained, ‘ ‘president 
of the Commercial Trust Company.” 

They passed more of the Colonel’s acquaintances on their 
way down the avenue, emerging from their comfortable 
houses for the day’s work. It was the order of an industrial 
society, the young man realized, in a depressed frame of 


mind. He also realized, sympathetically, that he was 





occupying his brother’s seat in the motor, and he was sorry 
for the old man at his side. The Colonel looked at him as 
if he were debating whether he should ask his son to stop at 


116 TOGETHER 


a barber shop and sacrifice his pointed beard, —but he 
refrained. 

Vickers had never seen the towering steel and terra-cotta 
building in which the hardware business was now housed. 
It stood in a cloud of mist and smoke close by the river in 
the warehouse district. As the car drew up before its 
pillared entrance, the Colonel pointed with pride to the 
brass plaque beside the door on which was engraved the 
architect’s name. 

“Corbin did it, —you know him? They say he’s the best 
man in America. It was his idea to sign it, the same as they 
do in Paris. Pretty good building, eh?” 

The young man threw back his head and cast a critical 


——- = 


glance over the twelve-story monster and again at the © 


dwarfed classic entrance through which was pouring just 
now a stream of young: men. 

“Yes, Corbin is a good man,” he assented vaguely, looking 
through the smoke drifts down the long crowded thorough- 
fare, on into a mass of telegraph wires, masts, and smoke- 
stacks, and lines of bulky freight cars. Some huge drays 


were backed against the Price building receiving bundles — 


of iron rods that fell clanging into their place. Wagons 
rattled past over the uneven pavement, and below along the 


river locomotives whistled. Above all was the bass over- — 


tone of the city, swelling louder each minute with the day’s 


work. A picture of a fair palace in the cavernous depths — 


of a Sienna street came over the young man with a vivid 
sense of pain. Under his breath he muttered to himself, 
“Fierce!’? Then he glanced with compunction at the gentle 
old face by his side. How had he kept so perfectly sweet, 


so fine in the midst of all this welter? The Colonel was | 


like an old Venetian lord, shrewd with the wisdom of men, 
gentle with more than a woman’s mercy; but the current 


that flowed by his palace was not that of the Bin Canal, — 


the winds not those of the Levant! 
But mayhap there was a ree caatieee in this shrill battlefield, 
if it could be found. 


Se 


Bons 


TOGETHER 117 


Within those long double doors there was a vast open area 
of floor space, dotted with iron beams, and divided eco- 
nomically into little plots by screens, in each one of which 
was a desk with the name of its occupant on an enamel sign. 

“The city sales department,’’ the Colonel explained as 
they crossed to the bank of shooting elevators. The Colonel 
was obliged to stop and speak and shake hands withmany 
men, mostly in shirt sleeves, with hats on their heads, smok- 
ing cigars or pipes. They all smiled when they caught sight 
of the old man’s face, and when he stopped to shake hands 
with some one, the man’s face shone with pride. It was plain 
enough that the “old man” was popular with his employees. 
The mere handshake that he gave had something instinctively 
human and kind in it. He had a little habit of kneading 
gently the hand he held, of clinging to it a trifle longer than 
was needed. Every one of the six or seven hundred men 
in the building knew that the head of the business was at 
heart a plain man like themselves, who had never forgotten 
the day he sold his first bill of goods, and respected all his 
men each in his place as a man. They knew his “record” 
as a merchant and were proud of it. They thought him a 
“big man.’’ Were he to drop out, they were convinced the 
business would run down, as if the main belt had slipped 
from the great fly-wheel of the machine shop. All the other 

“upstairs” men, as the firm members and managers of de- 
partments were iiled, were nonentities beside “ our Colonel,” 
the “whole thing,” ‘it,’ as he was affectionately daser bade 

So the progress to the elevators was slow, for the Colonel 
stopped to introduce his son to every man whose desk they 
passed or whose eye he caught. 

“My boy, Vickers, Mr. Slason — Mr. Slason is our credit 
man, Vick—vyou’ll know him better soon.... Mr. 
Jameson, just a moment, please; I want you to meet this 
young man!”’ 

“Tf he’s got any of your blood in him, Colonel, he’s all 
right,” a beefy, red-faced man jerked out, chewing at an 
unlighted cigar and looking Vickers hard in the face. 


118 TOGETHER 


Even the porters had to be introduced. It was a demo- 
cratic advance! But finally they reached the “upstairs’’ 
quarters, where in one corner was the Colonel’s private den, 
partitioned off from the other offices by ground glass, — 
a bare space with a little old black walnut desk, a private 
safe, and a set of desk telephones. Here Vickers stood look- 
ing down at the turmoil of traffic in the street below, while 
his father glanced over a mass of telegrams and memoranda 
piled on his desk. 

The roar of business that had begun to rumble through 
the streets at daybreak and was now approaching its meridian 
stunned the young man’s nerves. Deadened by the sound 
of it all, he could not dissociate from the volume that par- 
ticular note, which would be his note, and live oblivious to 
the rest. . . . So this was business! And what a feeble 
reed he was with which to prop it! Visions of that other 
life came thronging to his mind, — the human note of other 
cities he had learned to love, the placid hours of contempla- 
tion, visions of things beautiful in a world of joy! Humor- 
ously he thought of the hundreds of thousands of dollars 
this busy hive earned each year. A minute fraction of its 
profits would satisfy him, make him richer than all of it. © 
And he suspected that the thrifty Colonel had much 
more wealth stored away in that old-fashioned iron safe. 
What was the use of throwing himself into this great ma-— 
chine? It would merely grind the soul out of him and spit 
him forth. 

To keep it going, — that was the reason for sacrificing his 
youth, his desire. But why keep the thing going? Pride, 
sentiment? He did not know the Colonel’s feeling of 
fatherhood towards all the men who worked for him, his 
conviction that in this enterprise which he had created, 
all these human beings were able to live happier lives because 
of him, his leadership. There was poetry in the old man, and 
imagination. But the young man, with his eyes filled with 
those other —more brilliant — glories, saw only the 
grime, heard only the dull roar of the wheels that turned 


TOGETHER 119 


out a meaningless flood of gold, like an engine contrived to 
supply desires and reap its percentage of profits. 

“Father!’’ he cried involuntarily. 

Hot words of protest were in his throat. Let some other 
young man be found to run the machine; or let them make 
a corporation of it and sell it in the market. Or close the 
doors, its work having been done. But give him his life, 
and a few dollars! 

“Eh, Vick? Hungry? We’ll go over to the club for 
luncheon in just a minute.’’? And the old Colonel smiled 
affectionately at his son over his glasses. 

“Not now — not just yet,’’ Vickers said to himself, with a 
quick rush of comprehension. 

But the “now” never seemed to come, the right moment 
for delivering the blow, through all those months that fol- 
lowed, while the young man was settling into his corner of 
the great establishment. When the mother or Isabelle 
confessed their doubts to the Colonel, the old man would 
say :— 

“Tt will do him no harm, a little of it. He’ll know how 
to look after your money, mother, when lam gone.’’ And he 

~added, “It’s making a man of him, you’ll see!”’ 

There was another matter, little suspected by the Colonel, 
that was rapidly to make a man of his engaging young son. 


CHAPTER XV 


Wuen Vickers Price raised his eyes from his desk and, 
losing for the moment the clattering note of business that 
surged all around him, looked through dusky panes into the 
cloud of mist and smoke, visions rose before him that were 
strange to the smoky horizon of the river city... . 

From the little balcony of his room on the Pincio, all 
Rome lay spread before him, — Rome smiling under the 
blue heaven of an April morning! The cypresses in the 
garden pointed to a cloudless sky. Beyond the city roofs, 
where the domes of churches rose like little islands, was the 
green band of the Janiculum, and farther southwards the ~ 
river cut the city and was lost behind the Aventine. And 
still beyond the Campagna reached to the hills about 
Albano. 

Beneath he could see the Piazza del Popolo, with a line 
of tiny cabs standing lazily in the sunlight, and just below 
the balcony was a garden where a fountain poured softly, 
night and day. Brilliant balls of colored fruit hung from 
the orange trees, glossy against the yellow walls of the palazzo 
across the garden. From the steep street on the other side 
of the wall rose the thin voice of a girl, singing a song of the” 
mountains, with a sad note of ancient woe, and farther away 
in the city sounded the hoarse call of a pedler.... This 
was not the Rome of the antiquary, not the tawdry Rome of 
the tourist. It was the Rome of sunshine and color and 
music, the Rome of joy, of youth! And the young man, 
leaning there over the iron railing, his eyes wandering up and | 
down the city at his feet, drank deep of the blessed draught,— | 
the beauty and the joy of it, the spirit of youth and romance — 
in his heart. HY 

From some one of the rooms behind a ieiehboniie baleonil ! 


| 


TOGETHER , 12] 
floated a woman’s voice, swelling into a full contralto note, 
then sinking low and sweet into brooding contemplation. 
After a time Vickers went to his work, trying to forget the 
golden city outside the open window, but when the voice he had 
heard burst forth joyously outside, he looked up and saw the 
singer standing on her balcony, shading her eyes with a hand, 


- gazing out over the city, her voice breaking forth again and 


again in scattered notes, as though compelled by the light and 
the joy of it all. She was dressed in a loose black morning 
gown that rippled in the breeze over her figure. She clasped 
her hands above her bronze-colored hair, the action revealing 


_ the pure white tint of neck and arms, the well-knit body of 


small bones. She stood there singing to herself softly, the 
note of spring and Rome in her voice, Still singing she 
turned into her room, and Vickers could hear her, as she 


- moved back and forth, singing to herself. And as he hung 
_ brooding over Rome, listening to the gurgle of the fountain 


in the garden, he often listened to this contralto voice echoing 
the spirit within him. ... Sometimes a little girl came out 
on the balcony to play. 

“ Are you English ?’’ she asked the young man one day. 

“No, American, like you, eh?” Vickers replied. 

They talked, and presently the little girl running back 
into the room spoke to some one: “There is a nice man 
out there, mother. He says he’s American, too.” Vickers 
could not hear what the woman said in reply... . 

The child made them friends. Mrs. Conry, Vickers learned, 
was his neighbor’s name, and she was taking lessons in 
singing, preparing herself, he gathered, for professional 
work, —a widow, he supposed, until he heard the little 


girl say one day, “when we go home to father, — we are 


tiie 


going home, mother, aren’t we? Soon?’ And when the 
mother answered something unintelligible, the little girl 


- with a child’s subtle tact was silent. ... . 


This woman standing there on the balcony above the city, 
— all gold and white and black, save for the gray eyes, the 


- curving lines of her supple body, — this was what he saw 


122 TOGETHER 


of Europe, — all outside those vivid Roman weeks that he 
shared with her fading into a vague background. ‘Together 
they tasted the city, — its sunny climbing streets, its white 
squares, and dark churches, the fields beyond the Colosseum, 
the green Campagna, the vivid mornings, the windless moon- 
light nights! All without this marvellous circle, this charmed 
being of Rome, had the formlessness of a distant planet. 
Here life began and closed, and neither wished to know what 
the other had been in the world behind. 

That she was from some Southern state, — “a little tiny 
place near the Gulf, far from every civilized thing,” Mrs. 
Conry told him; and it was plain enough that she was 
meagrely educated, — there had been few advantages in that 
“tiny place.” But her sensuous temperament was now 
absorbing all that it touched. Rome meant little to her 
beyond the day’s charm, the music it made in her heart; 
while the man vibrated to every association, every memory 
of the laden city. ... 

Thus the days and weeks slipped by until the gathering 
heat warned them of the passing of time. One June day 
that promised to be fresh and cool they walked through the 
woods above the lake of Albano. Stacia Conry hummed the 
words of a song that Vickers had written and set to music, 
one of a cycle they had planned for her to sing — the Songs 
of the Cities. This was the song of Rome, and in it Vickers 
had embedded the sad strain that the girl sang coming up 
the street, — the cry of the past. 

“That is too high for me,” she said, breaking off. ‘ And 
it is melancholy. I hate sad things. It reminds meof that 
desolate place at the end of the earth where I came from.” 

‘“‘ All the purest music has a strain of sadness,’ Vickers 
protested. 

“No, no; it has longing, passioi! ... Iescaped!” She- 
looked down on the cuplike lake, shimmering in the sun 
below. ‘I knew in my heart that this lived, this World of 
sunshine and beauty and joy. I thirsted for it. Now I 
drink it!” 


TOGETHER 123. 


She turned on him her gray eyes, which were cool in spite 
of her emotion. She had begun again the song in a lower 
key, when at a turn in the path they came upon a little 
wooden shrine, one of those wayside altars still left in a land 
where religion has been life. Before the weather-stained 
blue-and-red madonna knelt a strangely medieval figure, — 
a man wasted and bare-headed, with long hair falling matted 
over his eyes. An old sheepskin coat came to his bare knees. 
Dirty, forlorn, leaning wearily on his pilgrim’s staff, the man 
was praying before the shrine, his lips moving silently. 

“What a figure!’’ Vickers exclaimed in a low voice, taking 
from his pocket a little camera. As he tiptoed ahead of 
Mrs. Conry to get his picture before the pilgrim should rise, 
he saw the intense yearning on the man’s face. Beckoning 
to his companion, Vickers put the camera into his pocket 
and passed on, Mrs. Conry following, shrinking to the oppo- 
site side of the way, a look of aversion on her mobile face. 

“Why didn’t you take him ?”’ she asked as they turned the 
corner of the road. 

“He was praying,—and he meant it,’’ Vickers answered 
vaguely. 

The woman’s lips curved in disgust at the thought of the 
dirty pilgrim on his knees by the roadside. . 

“Only the weak pray! I hate that sort of thing, — 
prayer and penitence.”’ 

‘Perhaps it is the only real thing in life,’’ Vickers replied 
from some unknown depth within him. 

“No, no! How can you say that? You who know what 
life can be. Never! That is what they tried to teach me 
at school. But I did not believe it. JI escaped. I wanted 
to sing. I wanted my own life.’ She became grave, and 
added under her breath: ‘And I shall get it. . That is 

best, best, best!’? She broke into a run down the sun- 
_ flecked road, and they emerged breathless in an olive orchard 
beside the lake. Her body panted as she threw her- 
self down on the grass. ‘‘Now!’’ she smiled, her skin all 
rose; ‘‘can you say that?’ And her voice chanted, ‘‘To 


124 TOGETHER 


live,—my friend,—to Live! And you and I are made to 
live, — isn’t it so?” 


The artist in Vickers, the young man of romance, his 


heart tender with sentiment, responded to the creed. But 
woven with the threads of this artist temperament were other 
impulses that stirred. The pilgrim in the act of penitence 
and ecstatic devotion was beautiful, too, and real,— ah, very 
real, as he was to know... . 

They supped that afternoon in a little wine shop looking 
towards the great dome swimming above Rome. And as 
the sun shot level and golden over the Campagna, lighting 
the old, gray tombs, they drove back to the city along the 
ancient Latin road. The wonderful plain, the most human 
landscape in the world, began to take twilight shadows. 


Rome hung, in a mist of sun, like a mirage in the far dis- 


tance, and between them and the city flowed the massive 


arches of an aqueduct, and all about were the crumbling © 


tombs, half hidden by the sod. The carriage rolled monoto- 


nously onwards. The woman’s eyes nearly closed; she © 


looked dreamily out through the white lids, fringed with heavy 
auburn lashes. She still hummed from time to time the 


old refrain of Vickers’s song. Thus they returned, hearing 


the voice of the old world in its peculiar hour. 


“T am glad that I have had it — that I have lived —a ~ 


little. This, this! —I can sing to-night! You must come 


and sit on my balcony and look at the stars while I sing to — 


you — the music of the day.” 


As the Porta San Paolo drew near, Vickers remarked :— — 


Sk Ball write you a song of Venice,—that is the music © 


for you.” 


‘Venice, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, —all! I 


love them all!” 


She reached her arms to the great cities of the earth, 
seeing herself in triumph, singing to multitudes the joy 


of life... . ‘Come to-night, — I will sing for you!” . 


On the porter’s table at the hotel lay a thick letter for . 


wal os 


Mrs. Conry. It bore the printed business address, — THE ~ 





TOGETHER 125 


Conry ConstrucTION Company. Mrs. Conry took it neg- 
ligently in her white hand. ‘“ You will come later?” she 
said, smiling back at the young man. 


Sitting crowded in front of Arragno’s and sipping a liqueur, 
Fosdick remarked to Vickers: “So you have run across 
the Conry? Of course I know her. I saw her in Munich 

the first time. The little girl still with her? Then it was 
Vienna. ... She’sgotasfaras Rome! Been over here two 
or three years studying music. Pretty good voice, and a 
better figure. Oh, Stacia is much of a siren.” 

Vickers moved uneasily and in reply to a question Fosdick 
continued : — 

“Widow — grass widow — properly linked — who knows? 
Our pretty country-women have such a habit of trotting 
around by themselves for their own delectation that you 
_ never can tell how to place them. She may be divorced — 
she may be the other hae You can’t tell. But she is a 
very handsome woman.” .. 

Mrs. Conry herself told Vickers the facts, as they sat 
at a little restaurant on the Aventine Where they loved 
to go to watch the night steal across the Palatine. 

“.. He offered me my education—my chance. I 
took it. I went to the conservatory at Cincinnati. Then 
he wanted to marry me, and promised to send me abroad 
to study more.”’... Her tone was dry, impartially re- 
counting the fact. Then her eyes dropped, and Vickers’s 
cigarette glowed between them as they leaned across the 
little iron table... . ‘I was a child then — did not know 
anything. I married him. The first years business was 
poor, and he could not let me have the money. When 
times got better, he let me come — kept his promise. Ihave 
been here nearly three years, back two or three times. 
And Baw ” her voice dropped, “I must go back for good — 
soon.’ 

Nothing more. But it seemed to Vickers as if a ghost 
had risen from the river mist and come to sit between them. 


& 


126 TOGETHER 


That the woman was paying a price for her chance, a heavy 
price, he could see. They walked back to the city between 
the deserted vineyards. As they crossed the river, Mrs. 
Conry stopped, and remarked sombrely, ‘‘A bargain is a 
bargain the world over, is it not?” 

Vickers felt the warm breathing woman close to him, felt 
her brooding eyes. ‘‘ One pays,’’ he murmured, “ I suppose !”’ 

She threw up her hand in protest, and they walked on into 
the lighted city. 


Occasionally Fosdick joined their excursions, and after 
one of them he said to Vickers: — 

‘‘My friend, she is wonderful; more so every time I see her. 
But beneath that soft, rounded body, with its smooth white 
skin, is something hard. Oh, I know the eyes and the hair 
and the throat and the voice! I, too, am a man. Paint 
her, if you like, or set her to music. She is for bel canto and 
moonlight and the voice of Rome. But there is a world 
outside this all, my friend, to which you and I belong, and 
you rather more than I. ... Stacia Conry doesn’t belong 
at all.’ 

“Which means?’’ demanded Vickers steadily of the burly — 
Fosdick. 

“Take care that you don’t get stuck in the sea of Sargasso. 
I think something bitter might rise out of all that loveliness.” 

Nevertheless, instead of going to the Maloya with Fosdick, 
Vickers stayed on in Rome, and September found him there 
and Mrs. Conry, too, having returned to the city from the 
mountain resort, where she had left the little girl with her 
governess. They roamed the deserted city, and again began 
to work on the songs which Mrs. Conry hoped to give in 
concerts on her return to America. Very foolish of the 
young man, and the woman, thus to prolong the moment of 
charm, to linger in the Sargasso Sea! But at least with the 
man, the feeling that kept him in Rome those summer 
months was pure and fine, the sweetest and the best that 
man may know, where he gives of his depths with no thought 


} 
, 
4 
; ; 
Se 
its oe by 
Ra ee 


TOGETHER 127 


_ of reward, willing to accept the coming pain. . .. Little 
Delia, who had seen quite as much of Vickers as her mother, 
said to him the day she left with her governess : — 

“We’re going home soon — before Thanksgiving. I’m 
so glad! And you'll be there, too?” 

“T suppose not, Delia,” the young man replied. But as 
it happened he was the first to go back. . . . 

That late September day they had returned from a ramble 
in the hills. It was nearly midnight when the cab rattled 
up the deserted streets to their hotel. As Vickers bade his 
companion good-night, with some word about a long-projected 
excursion to Volterra, she said : — 

“Come in and I will sing for a while. I don’t feel like 
sleep. ... Yes, come! Perhaps it will be the last of all 
our good times.” 

In the large dark apartment the night wind was drawing 
over the roofs of the hill through the open windows, flutter- 
ing stray sheets of music along the stone floor. Mrs. Conry 
lighted a candle on the piano, and throwing aside her hat 
and veil, dropping her gloves on the floor, struck some heavy 
chords. She sang the song they had been working over, the 
song of Venice, with a swaying melody as of floating water- . 
grasses. Then she plunged into a throbbing aria, — sing- 
ing freely, none too accurately, but with a passion and 
self-forgetfulness which promised greater things than the 
concert performer. From this on to other snatches of 
opera, to songs, wandering as the mood took her, coming 
finally to the street song that Vickers had woven into his 
composition for Rome, with its high, sad note. There her 
voice stopped, died in a ery half stifled in the throat, and 
leaving the piano she came to the window. A puff of wind 
blew out the candle. With the curtains swaying in the night 
wind, they stood side by side looking down into the dark 
city, dotted irregularly with points of light, and up euers 
the Janiculum to the shining stars. 

“Rome, Rome,” she Peeitred, and the words sighed past 

the young man’s ears, — “and life — Lirr!” 


128 TOGETHER 


It was life that was calling them, close together, looking 
forth into the night, their hearts beating, the longing to grasp 
it, to go out alone into the night for it. Freedom, and love, 
and life, — they beckoned! Vickers saw her eyes turn to 
him in the dark. ... 

‘And now I go,”’ he said softly. He found his way to the 
door in the dark salon, and as he turned he saw her white 
figure against the swaying curtain, and felt her eyes fol- 
lowing him. 

In his room he found the little blue despatch, sent up from 
his banker, which announced his brother’s death, and the 
next morning he left by the early express for the north to 
catch the Cherbourg boat. As he passed Mrs, Conry’s salon 
he slipped under the door the despatch with a note, which 
ended, “‘I know that we shall see each other again, some- 
where, somehow !”’ and from the piazza he sent back an arm- 
ful of great white fleur-de-lys. Later that morning, while 
Vickers was staring at the vintage in the Umbrian Valley 
and thinking of the woman all white and bronze with the 
gray eyes, Mrs. Conry was reading his note. A bitter smile 
curved her lips, as she gathered up the white flowers and 
laid them on the piano. 





CHAPTER XVI 


One winter day while Vickers Price was “selling nails,”’ 
as he still expressed his business career, there came in his 
mail a queer little scrawl, postmarked Pittsburg. It was 
from Delia Conry, and it ran:— 

“We’ve been home a month. We live in a hotel. I 
don’t like it. The bird you gave me died. Mother says 
she’ll get me a new one. I wish I could see you. Love 
from Delia.” 

But not a word from Mrs. Conry! Fosdick, drifting 
through Rome on his way to Turkestan, wrote: — 

“, .. What has become of the Conry? She has disap- 
peared from the cities of Europe with her melodious songs 
and beautiful hair. Are you touring the States with her? 
Or has she rediscovered Mr. Conry — for a period of seclu- 
sion? ... ‘To think of you serving hardware to the bar- . 
barians across the counter enlivens my dull moments. 
From the Sargasso Sea to St. Louis, — there is a leap for 
you, my dear.’ ... | 

While he “served hardware to the barbarians’”’ and in 
other respects conformed to the life of a privileged young 
American gentleman, Vickers Price dreamed of those Ro- 
man days, the happiest of his life. If that night they two 
had taken life in their hands? .. . Could the old Colonel 
have read his son’s heart, —if from the pinnacle of his years 
filled with ripe deeds he could have comprehended youth, — 
he might have been less sure that the hardware business 
was to be “the making of Vick”! | 

What had come to her? Had she accepted her lot, once 
back in the groove of fate, or had she rebelled, striking out 
for her own vivid desire of joy and song, of fame? Vickers 

K 129 


130 TOGETHER 


would have liked to hear that she had rebelled, was making 
her own life, — had taken the other road than the one he 
had accepted for himself. His tender, idealizing heart 
could not hold a woman to the sterner courses of conduct. 

For, as Fosdick had told him in Rome, the young man 
was a Sentimentalist with no exact vision of life. His 
heart was perpetually distorting whatever his mind told 
him was fact. This woman, with her beauty, her love of 
music, had touched him at the lyric moment of life, when 
reality was but the unstable foundation for dream. Life 
as might be, glowing, colored, and splendid, —life as it 
was within him, not as this hideous maelstrom all about 
him reported. And why not the I, the I! cried the spirit 
of youth, the egotistic spirit of the age. For all reply there 
was the bent, gray head of the Colonel at his desk in the 
office beside him. “One sentiment against another,” Fos- 
dick might say. . . 

Finally Stacia Conry wrote, a little note: she was to be 
in St. Louis on the fourteenth for a short time and hoped 
that he would call on her at the hotel. A perfectly proper, 
colorless little note, written in an unformed hand, with a 
word or two misspelled, —the kind of note that gave no 
indication of the writer, but seemed like the voice of a stran- 
ger. However, as Vickers reflected, literary skill, the power 
to write personal little notes did not go necessarily with 
a talent for music —or for life. Nannie Lawton wrote 
intimate notes, and other women, single and married, whom 
Vickers had come to know these past months. But their 
cleverest phrases could not stir his pulses as did this crude 
production. } 

The woman who was waiting for him in the little hotel 
parlor, however, gave him a curious shock, —she was so 
different in her rich street costume from the woman in 
black and white, whose picture had grown into his memory. 
She seemed older, he thought, thus accounting for that 
strange idealizing power of the mind to select from a face 
what that face has specially given it and create an alto- 





‘ f 
4 


TOGETHER 131 


gether new being, with its own lineaments graven in place 
of actual bone and tissue. It takes time to correct this 
ideal misreport of the soul, to accept the fact! Except 
for the one glance from the gray eyes which she gave him 
as they shook hands, Stacia Conry did not stir the past. 
But she was voluble of the present. 

“You did not expect this! You see my husband had some 
work to attend to near here, and I thought I would come 


with him. ... No, we left Delia in Pittsburg with his 
mother, — she wanted to see you, but she would be in the 
way.” 


They came soon to her singing, and her face clouded. 

“T haven’t been able to get an opening. I wanted to sing 
the Cycle with an orchestra. But I haven’t succeeded, — our 
Pittsburg orchestra won’t look at any talent purely domes- 
tic. It is all pull over here. J haven’t any influence. . . 
You must start with some backing, —sing in private houses 
for great people! We don’t know that kind, you see.” 

“And concerts?’’ Vickers inquired. 

“The same way, —to get good engagements you must’ 
have something to show. ... I’ve sung once or twice, — 
in little places, church affairs and that kind of thing.” 

Vickers laughed as Mrs. Conry’s expressive lips curled. 

“They tell you to take everything to begin with. But 
singing for church sociables in Frankfort and Alleghany, — 
that doesn’t do much! I want to go to New York,—I 
know people there, but — ” 

Vickers understood that Mr. Conry objected. 

“Tt must come sometime,” she said vehemently; “only 
waiting is killing. It takes the life out of you, the power, 
don’t you think?” 

“Could you sing here?” Vickers asked, — “now, I mean? 
I might be able to arrange it.” 

“Oh, if you could!’”’ Mrs. Conry’s face glowed, and her 
fingers played nervously with her long chain. “If I could 
give the Cycle with your accompaniment, here in St. Louis 
where you are so well known —”’ 


132 TOGETHER 


Vickers smiled at the picture of his début in St. Louis » 
drawing-rooms. 

“J will ask my sister to help,’ he said. “I should 
like her to call.’ ' 

Mrs. Conry became suddenly animated, as if after a period 
of depressing darkness she saw a large ray of sunshine. She 
had thought of possibilities when she had persuaded her 
husband to take her to St. Louis, but had not expected them 
to develop a once. 

“You see,” she continued quickly, “if I can get a hearing 
here, it means that other people may want me,— I'll be- 
come known, a little.” 

“My mother couldn’t have it,’’ Vickers explained, “nor 
my sister, because of our mourning. But Mrs. Lawton, — 
that would be better any way.’’ He thought of Nannie 
Lawton’s love of réclame, and he knew that though she 
would never have considered inviting the unheralded Mrs. 
Conry to sing in her drawing-room, she would gladly have 
him appear there with any one, playing his own music. 

“Yes, we'll put it through! The Songs of the Cities.” 
He repeated the words with sentimental visions af the hours . 
of their composition. 

“And then I have some more, — Spanish songs. They 
take, you know! And folk-songs.” Mrs. Conry talked 
on sagerly of her ambitions until Vickers left, having ar- 
ranged for Isabelle to call the next day. As he took his 
way to the Lawtons’ to use his influence with the volatile 
Nan in behalf of Mrs. Conry, his memory of their talk was 
sad. ‘America, that’s it,’ he explained. ‘She wants to 
‘ do something for herself, to get her independence.’ And 
he resolved to leave no stone unturned, no influence unused, 
to gratify her ambition. 

So Isabelle called on Mrs. Conry in company with Nannie 
Lawton. Vickers little knew what an ordeal the woman 
he loved was passing through in this simple affair. A 
woman may present no difficulties to the most fastidiously — 
bred man, and yet be found wanting in a thousand _par- 


* eae * 


TOGETHER 133 


ticulars by the women of his social class. As the two 
emerged from the hotel, Isabelle looked dubiously at Mrs. 
Lawton. 

“Queer, isn’t she?” that frank lady remarked. “Oh, 
she’s one of those stray people you run across in Europe. 
Perhaps she can sing all right, though I don’t care. The 
men will be crazy after her, — she’s the kind, —red hair 
‘and soft skin and all that. ... Better look out for that 
young brother of yours, Isabelle. She is just the one to 
nab our innocent Vickie.” 

Isabelle’s report of her call had some reserves. 

“Of course she is very striking, Vick. But, you see, — 
she — she isn’t exactly our kind!”’ 

“That is Nan,’ the young man retorted impatiently. 
“T never heard you say that sort of thing before. What 
on earth is ‘our kind’? She is beautiful and has talent, 
a lot of it, — all she wants is her chance. And why shouldn’t 
she have it?” 

Isabelle smiled at his heat, and replied caressingly : — 

“She shall have all that Nan and I can do for her here. 
- But don’t be foolish about her. I suspect you could be 


with a woman — because of your dear old heart. ... If 
she can’t sing a note, she’ll make a hit with her looks, Nan 
says!” 


So the musicale was arranged. There were mostly 
women in Mrs. Lawton’s smart little music room when Mrs. 
Conry rose to sing a series of introductory songs. She was 
very striking, as Isabelle and Mrs. Lawton had foreseen 
that she would be, —rather bizarrely dressed in a white 
and gold costume that she had designed herself, with a 
girdle of old stones strung loosely about her waist. She 
was nervous and sang uncertainly at first so that Vickers 
had to favor her in his accompaniment. He could see the 
trembling of her white arm beside him. The Cycle of the 
Cities came near the end of the programme, and when 
Vickers took his seat to play the accompaniments, he was 
aware that a number of men had arrived and were standing 


134 TOGETHER 


in the hall, peering through the doors at the performance. — 
He knew well enough what the men were thinking of him, 
sitting there playing his own songs, — that it was a queer, 
monkey performance for the son of Colonel Price! The 
fine arts are duly recognized in American cities; but the 
commercial class, as always has been its wont, places them 
in a category between millinery and theology. 

She had chosen Paris to open with, and gave the song 
with assurance, eliciting especially from the men in the hall 
the first real applause. Then followed Vienna, Munich. 
She was singing well, gaining confidence. When it came ~ 
to Venice, — Vickers remembered as he followed her swim- 
ming voice the twilight over the Campagna, the approaching 
mass of Rome, —even the women woke to something like 
enthusiasm. As she uttered the first note of Rome, she 
glanced down at Vickers, with a little smile, which said : — 

“Do you remember? ‘This is ours, —I am singing this 
for you!” 

Her face was flushed and happy. She sang the difficult 
music as she had sung that last night in Rome, and Vickers, 
listening to the full voice so close to him, heard again the 
high sad note of the street singer, in the golden spring day, 
uttering this ancient melody of tears,—only this time it 
was woven with laughter and joy. When she finished, 
he sought her eyes; but Mrs. Conry was sweeping the gath- 
ering with a restless glance, thinking of her encore. .. . 

Afterwards the women said agreeable things about Vick- 
ers’s music, especially the Paris and the Venice. About 
Mrs. Conry they said that her voice was good, “somewhat 
uncultivated,” “too loud for drawing-room music,” — 
safe criticisms. The men said little about the music, 
but they clustered around the singer. Mrs. Lawton looked 
significantly at Isabelle and winked. One old gentleman, 
something of a beau as well as a successful lawyer, con- 
gratulated Vickers on his “tuneful”? music. “It must be 
a pleasant avocation to write songs,’’ he said. ... 

They dined at the Lawtons’, and afterwards Vickers took 


TOGETHER 135 


Mrs. Conry to the hotel. She was gay with the success 
she had had, the impression she had made on the men. 

“Something’ll come of this, 1 am sure. Do you think 
they liked me?”’ 

“You sang well,’’ Vickers replied evasively, “better than 
well, the Rome.” 

In the lobby of the hotel she turned as though to dismiss 
him, but Vickers, who was talking of a change to be made 
in one of the songs, accompanied her to the parlor above, 
where they had practised the music in preparation for the 
concert. Mrs. Conry glanced quickly into the room as 
they entered, as if expecting to find some one there. Vick- 
ers was saying :— 

“T think we shall have to add another one to the Cycle, — 
New York or something to stand for — well, what it is 
over here, — just living!” 

The door of the inner room opened and a man appeared, 
coatless, with a much-flowered waistcoat. 

“So you’re back,” the man remarked in a heavy voice. 

“My husband,” Mrs. Conry explained, ‘Mr. Vickers 
Price!” 

Mr. Conry shuffled heavily into the room. He was a 
large man with a big grizzled head and very red face, finely 
chased with purple veins. He gave Vickers a stubby hand. 

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Price. Heard about you from 
Delia. Sit down.’ Conry himself stood, swaying slightly 
on his stout legs. After a time he chose a seat with great 
deliberation and continued to stare at the young man. 
“Have a cigar?’ He took one from his waistcoat pocket 
and held it towards the young man. “It’s a good one, — 
none of your barroom smokes,— oh, I see you are one of 
those cigarette fiends, same as Stacia!”’ 

There was a conversational hiatus, and Vickers wes think- 
ing of going. | 

“Well, how was the show?” Conry demanded of his 
wife. “Did you sing good, — make a hit with the swells? 
She thinks she wants to sing,” he explained with a wink to 


136 . TOGETHER 


Vickers, “but I tell her she’s after sassiety, — that’s what © 
the women want; ain’t it so?” 

“Mrs. Conry sang very well indeed,’ Vickers remarked 
in default of better, and rose to leave. 

“Don’t go,—what’s your hurry? Have something to 
drink?. I-got some in there you don’t see every day 
in the week, young man. A racing friend of ‘mine from 
Kentuck sends it to me. What’s yours, Stacy?” .. 

When the young man departed, Stacia Conry stared at 
the door through which he had disappeared, with a dead 
expression that had something disagreeable in it. Conry, 
who had had his drink, came back to the parlor and began 
to talk. 

“T went to a show myself to-night, seeing you were 
amusing yourself. ... There was a girl there who danced 
and sang, — you’d oughter seen her, . . > Well, what are 
you sittin’ staring at? Ain’t you coming to bed?” ; 

His wife rose from her seat, exclaiming harshly, “ Let 
me alone!’’ And Conry, with a half-sober scrutiny of the 
woman, who had flung herself face down on the lounge, 
mumbled: — 

“Singing don’t seem to agree with you. Well, I kept 
my word; gave you the money to educate yourself.” .. . 

“And I have paid you!” the wife flashed. “God, I 
have paid!” 

The man stumbled off to bed. 


Vickers, on leaving the hotel, walked home in the chill 
night, a sickening sensation in his heart. If he had been a 
shrewd young man, he might have foreseen the somewhat 
boozy Mr. Conry, the vulgar setting of the woman he loved. 
If there had been the least thing base in him, he might have 
welcomed it, for his own uses. But being a sentimentalist 
and simple in nature. the few moments of intercourse with 
Mr. Conry had come like a revelation to him. This was — 
what she had sold herself to for her education. This was — 
what she was tied to! And this what she sought to escape ~ 





TOGETHER 137 


from by her music, to place herself and her child beyond the 
touch of that man! 

Vickers in his disgust overlooked the fact that little Delia 
seemed to love her father, and that though Conry might 
not be to his taste, he might also be a perfectly worthy 
citizen, given occasionally to liquor. But love and youth 
and the idealizing temperament make few allowances. To 
give her that freedom which her beauty and her nature 
craved, he would do what he could, and he searched his 
memory for names and persons of influence in the profes- 
sional world of music. He had the fragments of a score 
for an opera that he had scarce looked at since he had begun 
“to sell nails”; but to-night he took it from the drawer 
and ran it over, — ‘Love Among the Ruins,’’ —and as 
he went to sleep he saw Stacia Conry singing as she had 
sung that last night in Rome, singing the music of his opera, 
success and fame at her feet... . 

The something that Mrs. Conry hoped for did come from 
that introduction at the Lawtons’. The wife of one of those 
men she had charmed called on her and invited her to sing 
“those pleasant little songs Mr. Price wrote for you” (with 
Mr. Price’s appearance, of course!). And several women, 
who were anxious to be counted as of the Lawton set, 
hastened to engage Mrs. Conry to sing at their houses, with 
the same condition. Vickers understood the meaning of 
this condition and disliked the position, but consented in 
his desire to give Mrs. Conry every chance in his power. 
Others understood the situation, and disliked it, — among 
them Isabelle. Nannie Lawton threw at her across a dinner- 
table the remark: ‘‘When is Vick going to offer his ‘ Love 
Among the Ruins’? Mrs. Conry is the ‘ruins,’ I suppose!” 

And the musicales, in spite of all that Vickers could do, 
were only moderately successful. In any community, the 
people who hunt the latest novelty are limited in number, 
and that spring there arrived a Swedish portrait painter and 
an Antarctic traveller to push the beautiful singer from 
the centre of attention. So after the first weeks the en- 


138 TOGETHER 


gagements became farther spaced and less desirable, less | 
influential. Mrs. Conry still stayed at the hotel, though 
her husband had been called to another city on a contract 
he had undertaken. She realized that her début had not 
been brilliant, but she clung to the opportunity, in the 
hope that- something would come of it. And_ naturally 
enough Vickers saw a good deal of her; not merely the days 
they appeared together, but almost every day he found 
an excuse for dropping in at the hotel, to play over some 
music, to take her to ride in his new motor, which he ran 
himself, or to dine with her. Mrs. Conry was lonely. After 
Isabelle went to California for her health, she saw almost 
no one. The women she met at her engagements found 
her “not our kind,’ and Nan Lawton’s witticism about 
“the ruins”? and Vickers did not help matters. Vickers 
saw the situation and resented it. This loneliness and 
disappointment were bad for her. She worked at her music 
in a desultory fashion, dawdled over novels, and smoked 
too many cigarettes for the good of her voice. She seemed 
listless and discouraged. Vickers redoubled his efforts to 
have her sing before a celebrated manager, who was coming 
presently to the city with an opera company. 

‘She sees no way, no escape,’ he said to himself. ‘One 
ray of hope, and she would wake to what she was in Europe!’ 

In his blind, sentimental devotion, he blamed the 
accidents of life for her disappointment, not the woman 
herself. When he came, she awoke, and it was an uncon- 
scious joy to him, this power he had to rouse her from her 
apathy, to make her become for the time the woman he 
always saw just beneath the surface, eager to emerge if 
life would but grant her the chance. 

His own situation had changed with the growing year. 
The Colonel, closely watching ‘‘ the boy,’’ was coming gradu- 
ally to comprehend the sacrifice that he had accepted, all 
the more as Vickers never murmured but kept steadily 
at his work. Before Isabelle left for California, she spoke 
plainly to her father: — 


pi ail 


TOGETHER 139 


“What’s the use, Colonel! No matter how he tries, 
Vick can never be like you,— and why should he be any 
way?” 

“Tt won’t have done any harm,” the old man replied 
dubiously. ‘‘ We'll see!” 

First he made his son independent of salary or allowance 
by giving him a small fortune in stocks and bonds. Then 
one day, while Mrs. Conry was still in the city, he suggested 
that Vickers might expect a considerable vacation in the 
summer. ‘‘ You can go to Europe and write something,”’ 
he remarked, in his simple faith that art could be laid down 
or resumed at will. Vickers smiled, but did not grasp the 
opportunity eagerly. When he told Mrs. Conry that after- 
noon of the proposed “ vacation,’’ she exclaimed enviously :— 

“T knew you would go back!”’ 

“Tam not sure that I shall go.” 

She said perfunctorily: ‘Of course you must go — 
will you go back to Rome? I shall be so glad to think you 
dre doing what you want to do.” 

He turned the matter off with a laugh: — 

“The dear old boy thinks two months out of a year is 
long enough to give to composing an opera. It’s like fish- 
ing, —a few weeks now and then if you can afford it!” 

“But you wouldn’t have to stay here at all, if you made 
up your mind not to,’”’ she remarked with a touch of hard- 
ness. ‘‘They’ll give you what you want.” 

“T am not sure that I want it,’’ he replied slowly, “at 
the price.” 

She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then perceiving 
another meaning in his words, lowered her eyes. She was 
thinking swiftly, ‘If we could both go!’ But he was 
reflecting rather bitterly on that new wealth which his 
father had given him, the dollars piling up to his credit, 
not one of which he might use as he most dearly desired to 
use them — for her! With all this power within his easy 
reach he could not stretch forth his hand to save a human 
soul. For thus he conceived the woman’s need. 


140 TOGETHER 


It came to Mrs. Conry’s last engagement, — the last 
possible excuse for her lingering in the city. It was a sub- 
urban affair, and the place was difficult to reach. Vickers 
had invited the Falkners to go with them, to prevent gossip, 
and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had 
confided to Isabelle that ‘‘ Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary,” 
“not half good enough for our adorable Vickers to afficher 
himself with.’’ Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the 
beautiful Mrs. Conry, as was Bessie’s wont to be with pretty 
nearly all the world. It was late on their return, and the 
Falkners left them at the station. With the sense that 
to-night they must part, they walked slowly towards the 
hotel, then stopped at a little German restaurant for supper. 
They looked at each other across the marble-top table with- 
out speaking. The evening had been a depressing con- 
clusion to the concert season they had had together. And 
that morning Vickers had found it impossible to arrange 
a meeting for Mrs. Conry with the director of a famous 
orchestra, who happened to be in the city. 

“You must go to-morrow?” Vickers asked at last. “I 
may get a reply from Moller any day.” 

Mrs. Conry looked at him out of her gray eyes, as if she 
were thinking many things that a woman might think but 
could not say, before she replied slowly :— 

“My husband’s coming back to-morrow — to get me.” 
As Vickers said nothing, she continued, slowly shaking the 
yellow wine in her glass until it circled, — “And it’s no 
use — I’m not good enough for Moller —and you know 
it. I must have more training, more experience.” 

Vickers did know it, but had not let himself believe it. 

“My little struggle does not matter, — I’m only a woman 
—and must do as most women do. ... Perhaps, who 
knows! the combination may change some day, and —” 
she glanced fearlessly at him — ‘‘ we shall all do as we want 
in another world!” 

Then she looked at her watch. It was very late, and the 
tired waiters stood leaning listlessly against their tables. 


TOGETHER 141 


“T am tired,” she said at last. “Will you call a cab, 
please? ”’ 

They drove silently down the empty boulevard. A 
mist came through the cab window, touching her hair 
with fine points. Her hand lay close to his. 

“How happy we were in Rome! Rome!”’ she looked out 
into the dark night, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘ You 
have been very good to me, dear friend. Sometime I shall 
sing to you again, to you alone. Now good-by.” ... 

His hand held hers, while his heart beat and words rose 
clamorously to his lips, —the words of rebellion, of protest 
and love, the words of youth. But he said nothing, —it 
was better that they should part without a spoken word, — 
better for her and better for him. His feeling for her, com- 
pact of tenderness, pity, and belief, had never been tested 
by any clear light. She was not his; and beyond that fact 
he had never looked. 7 

So the carriage rolled on while the two sat silent with 
beating hearts, and as it approached the hotel he quickly 
bent his head and kissed the hand that was in his. 

“Come to-morrow,” she whispered, ‘‘in the morning, — 
once more.” 

“No,” he said simply; “I can’t. You know why.” 

As Vickers stepped out of the cab he recognized Conry. 
The contractor had been looking up and down the street, 
and had started to walk away, but turned at the sound of 
the carriage wheels and came over towards them. Some- 
thing in his appearance, the slouch hat pulled forward over 
his face, the quick jerky step, suggested that he had been 
drinking. Vickers with a sensation of disgust foresaw a 
scene there on the pavement, and he could feel the shrinking 
of the woman by his side. 

“Good evening, Mr. Conry,” Vickers said coolly, turning 
to give Mrs. Conry his hand. -A glance into Conry’s 
eyes had convinced him that the man was in a drunken 
temper, and his one thought was to save her from a public 
brawl. Already a couple of people sauntering past had 


142 TOGETHER 


paused to look at them. Conry grasped the young man 
by the arm and flung him to one side, and thrusting his 
other hand into the cab jerked his wife out of it. 

““Come here!”’ he roared. “I'll shaw you — you —”’ 

Mrs. Conry, trembling and white, tried to free her arm 
and cross the pavement. The driver, arranging himself 
on the seat, looked down at Vickers, winked, and waited. 
Conry still dragged his wife by the arm, and as she tried 
to free herself he raised his other hand and slapped her across 
the face as he would cuff a struggling dog, then struck her 
again. She groaned and half sank to the pavement. The 
curious bystanders said nothing, made no move to interfere. 
Here was a domestic difference, about a woman apparently ; 
and the husband was exerting his ancient, impregnable 
rights of domination over the woman, who was his... . 

All these months Vickers had never even in imagination 
crossed the barrier of Fact. Now without a moment’s 
wavering he raised his hand and struek Conry full in the 
face, and as the man staggered from the unexpected blow 
he struck him again, knocking him to the ground. Then 
swiftly disentangling the woman’s hand from her husband’s 
grasp, he motioned to the cab driver to pull up at the curb 
and carried her into the cab. When Vickers closed the door, 
the driver without further orders whipped up his horse and 
drove into a side street, leaving the group on the pavement 
staring at them and at Ponty who was staggering to his 
feet. 

Within the cab Mrs. Cotiry moaned inarticulately. Vick- 
ers held her in his arms, and slowly bending his head to 
hers he kissed her upon the lips. Her lips were cold, but 
after a time to the touch of his lips hers responded with a 
trembling, yielding kiss. 

Thus they drove on, without words, away from the city. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Ir had all happened in a brief moment of time, — the 
blow, the rescue, the kiss. But it had changed the face of 
the world for Vickers. What hitherto had been clouded 
in dream, a mingling of sentiment, pity, tender yearning, 
became at once reality. With that blow, that kiss, his soul 
had opened to a new conception of life... . 

They drove to the Lanes’ house. Isabelle had returned 
that day from California, and her husband was away on 
business. Vickers, who had a latch-key, let himself into 
the house and tapped at his sister’s door. When she saw 
him, she cried out, frightened by his white face: — 

“Vick! What has happened ?”’ 

“Mrs. Conry is downstairs, Isabelle. I want her to stay 
here with you to-night!” 

“Vick! What is it?” Isabelle demanded with staring 
eyes. 

“T will tell you to-morrow.” 

“No—now!” She clutched her wrap about her shiver- 
ingly and drew him within the room. 

“Tt’s —I am going away, ‘Isabelle, at once — with Mrs. 
Conry. There has been trouble — her husband struck her on 
the street, when she was with me. I took her from him.’’ 

“Vick!” Her voice trembled as she cried, ‘‘ No, — it 
wasn’t that!” 

“No,” he said gravely. ‘‘There was no cause, none at 
all. He was drunk. But I don’t know that it would have 
made any difference. The man is a low brute, and her 
life is killing her. I love her — well, that is all!” 
“Vick!” she cried; “I knew you would do some —” 
she hesitated before his glittering eyes — “something very 
risky,” she faltered at last. 

143 


144 TOGETHER 


He waved this aside impatiently. 

“What will you do now?” she asked hesitantly. 

“T don’t know,—we shall go away,” he replied vaguely; 
“but she is waiting, needs me. Will you help her, — help 
us ?"" he demanded, turning to the door, “or shall we have 
to go to-night?” 

“Wait,” she said, putting her hands on his arms; “you 
ean’t do that! Just think what it will mean to father 
and mother, to everybody. ... Let me dress and take 
her back!” she suggested half heartedly. 

“‘Tsabelle!’? he cried. ‘‘She shall never go back to that 
brute.” 

“You love her so much?” 

“Enough for anything,” he answered gravely, turning 
to the door. 

In the face of his set look, his short words, all the pro- 
testing considerations on the tip of her tongue seemed futile. 
To a man in a mood like his they would but drive him to 
further folly. And admiration rose unexpectedly in her 
heart for the man who could hold his fate in his hands like 
this and unshakenly cast it on the ground. The very mad- 
ness of it all awed her. She threw her arms about him, 
murmuring : — 

“Oh, Vick — for you —it seems so horrid, so — ” 

‘Tt 7s mean,’ he admitted through his compressed lips. 
“For that very reason, don’t you see, I will take her beyond 
where it can touch her, at once, this*very night, —if you 
will not help us!” 

And all that she could do was to kiss him, the tears fall- 
ing from her eyes. 

“T will, Vick, dear... .. It makes no difference to me 
what happens, — if you are only happy!” 


As he drove to his father’s house in the damp April night, 
he tried to think of the steps he must take on the morrow. 
He had acted irresistibly, out of the depths of his nature, 
unconcerned that he was about to tear in pieces the fabric 


TOGETHER 145 


of his life. It was not until he had let himself into the silent 
house and noiselessly passed his mother’s door that he 
realized in sudden pain what it must mean to others. 

He lay awake thinking, thinking. First of all she must— 
telegraph for Delia to meet them somewhere,— she must 
have the child with her at once; and they must leave the 
city before Conry could find her and make trouble... . 
And he must tell the Colonel... . 

The next morning when Vickers entered his sister’s 
library, Stacia Conry rose from the lounge where she had 
been lying reading a newspaper, and waited hesitantly 
while he came forward. She was very pretty this morning, 
with a faint touch of rose beneath her pale skin, her long 
lashes falling over fresh, shy eyes. In spite of it all she had 
slept, while the sleepless hours he had spent showed in his 
worn, white face. He put out his arms, and she clung to him. 

“We must decide what to do,” he said. 

“You will not leave me?” she whispered, her head lying 
passive against his breast. Suddenly raising her head, she 
clasped her arms about his neck, drawing him passionately 
to her, crying, ‘I love you — love you, — you will never 
leave me?” 

And the man looking down into her eyes answered from 
his heart in all truth: — 

“Never, never so long as I live!’”’ The words muttered 
in his broken voice had all the solemnity of a marriage oath; 
and he kissed her, sealing the promise, while she lay passive 
in his arms. 

Holding her thus to him, her head against his beating 
heart, he felt the helplessness, the dependence of the woman, 
and it filled him with a subdued, sad joy. His part was to 
protect her, to defend her always, and his grip tightened 
about her yielding form. Their lips met again, and this 
time the sensuous appeal of the woman entered his senses, 
clouding for the time his delicate vision, submerging that 
nobler feeling which hitherto alone she had roused. She 
was a woman, — his to desire, to have! 

Li 


146 TOGETHER 


“What shall we do?” she asked, sitting down, still hold- 
ing his hand. 

“First we must get Delia. We had better telegraph 
your mother at once to meet us somewhere.” 

6c Oh ! ) 

“You must have Delia, of course. He will probably 
make trouble, try to get hold of the child, and so we must 
leave here as soon as possible, to-day if we can.” 

“Where shall we go?” she asked, bewildered. 

“Somewhere — out of the country,’ he replied slowly, 
looking at her significantly. ‘Of course it would be better 
to wait and have the divorce; but he might fight that, and 
make a mess, — try to keep the child, you understand.” 

She was silent, and he thought she objected to his summary 
plan. But it was on her lips to say, ‘Why not leave Delia 
with him until it can all be arranged?’ Something in 
the young man’s’ stern face restrained her; she was afraid 
of outraging instincts, delicacies that were strange to her. 

“Should you mind,” he asked pleadingly, ‘going without 
the divorce? Of course to me it is the same thing. You are 
mine now, as I look at it, — any marriage would mean little 
to either of us after — the past! Somehow to hang about 
here, with the danger of trouble to you, waiting for a divorce, 
with the row and all, —I can’t see you going through it. I 
think the — other way —is better.” 

She did not fully understand his feeling about it, which 
was that with the soiled experience of her marriage another 
ceremony with him would be a mere legal farce. To the 
pure idealism of his nature it seemed cleaner, nobler for them 
to take this step without any attempt to regularize it in the 
eyes of Society. To him she was justified in doing what 
she had done, in leaving her husband for him, and that would 
have to be enough for them both. He despised half meas- 
ures, compromises. He was ready to cast all into his defiance 
of law. Meanwhile she pondered the matter with lowered 
eyes and presently she asked: — 

“ How long would it take to get a divorce?” 


TOGETHER 147 


“Tf he fought it, a year perhaps, or longer.” 

“And I should have to stay here in the city ?” 

“Or go somewhere else to get a residence.” 

‘““And we —”’ she hesitated to complete the thought. 

He drew her to him and kissed her. 

“JT think we shall be enough for each other,”’ he said. 

“T will do whatever you wish,”’ she murmured, thus softly 
putting on his shoulders the burden of the step. 

He was the man, the strong protector that had come to her 
in her distress, to whom she fled as naturally as a hunted 
animal flies to a hole, as a crippled bird to the deep under- 
brush. Her beauty, her sex, herself, had somehow attracted 
to her this male arm, and the right to take it never occurred 
to her. He loved her, of course, and she would make him 
love her more, and all would be well. If he had been penni- 
less, unable to give her the full protection that she needed, 
then they would have been obliged to consider this step more 
carefully, and doubts might have forced themselves upon her. 
But as it was she clung to him, trusting to the power of her 
sex to hold him constant, to shield her... . 

“Now I must go down to the office to see my father,” 
Vickers said finally. ‘I’ll be back early in the afternoon, and 
then — we will make our plans.” 

“Will you tell him, your father ?”’ Mrs. Conry asked tensely. 

“ He will have to know, of course.’”’ As he spoke a wave of 
pain shot over the young man’s face. He stepped to the 
door and then turned: — 

“You will telegraph about Delia, —she might meet us in 
New York —in two days.” 

“Very well,’ Mrs. Conry murmured submissively. 


The Colonel was sitting in his little corner office before the 
old-fashioned dingy desk, where he had transacted so many 
affairs of ohe sort or another for nearly thirty years. He was 
not even reading his mail this morning, but musing, as he 
often was when the clerks thought that he was more busily 
employed. Isabelle and her child had returned from Cali- 


148 TOGETHER 


fornia, the day before. She had not recovered from bearing 
the child, and the St. Louis doctors who had been consulted had 
nothelped her. It might be well to see some one in New York. 

But the Colonel was thinking most of all this morning 
of his son. The tenacious old merchant was wondering 
whether he had done right in accepting the young man’s 
sacrifice. In his disgust for the do-nothing, parasitic off- 
spring about him, perhaps he had taken a delicate instru- 
ment and blunted it by setting it at coarse work. Well, it 
was not too late to change that. 

‘The boy didn’t start right,’ the Colonel mused sadly. 
‘He didn’t start selling hardware on the road. He’s done 
his best, and he’s no such duffer as Parrott’s boy anyhow. 
But he would make only a front office kind of business man. 
The business must get on by itself pretty soon. Perhaps that 
idea for a selling company would not be a bad thing. And 
that would be the end of Parrott and Price.’ 

Nevertheless, the old man’s heart having come slowly to 
this generous decision was not light,—if the other boy had 
lived, if Belle had married some one who could have gone 
into the business. The bricks and mortar of the build- 
ing were part of his own being, and he longed to live 
out these last few years in the shadow of his great enter- 
prise. 

“Father, can I see you about something important ?” 

The Colonel, startled from his revery, lacked up at his son 
with his sweet smile. 


“Why, yes, my boy, —I wasn’t doing much, and I had | 


something to say to you. Sit down. You got away from 
home early this morning.” 

He glanced inquiringly at his son’s white, set face and 
tense lips. . Playing with his eye-glasses, he began to talk 
lightly of other matters, as was his wont when he felt the 
coming of a storm. 

Vickers listened patiently, staring straight across his 
father to the wall, and when the Colonel came to a full pause, 
he said abruptly : — 


4 


\ 


t 


TOGETHER 149 


“Father, you said you were ready for me to take a vaca- 
tion. I must go at once, to-day if possible. And, father, 
I can’t come back.” 

The old man moved slightly in his chair. It was his inten- 
tion to offer the young man his freedom, but it hurt him to 
have it taken for granted in this light manner. He waited. 

“Something has happened,’”’ Vickers continued in a low 
voice, “something which will alter my whole life.” 

The Colonel still waited. 

“T love a woman, and I must take her away from here at 
once.”’ 

“Who is she?’ the old man asked gently. 

“Mrs. Conry —”’ 

“But she’s a married woman, isn’t she, Vick?” 

“She has a dirty brute of a husband — she’s left him 
forever !”’ ‘ 

The Colonel’s blue eyes opened in speechless surprise, as 
his son went on to tell rapidly what had happened the 
previous night. Before he had finished the old man in- 
terrupted by a low exclamation: — 

“But she is a married woman, Vickers!”’ 

“Her marriage was a mistake, and she’s paid for it, poor 
woman, — paid with soul and body! She will not pay any 
longer.” 

“But what are you going to do, my boy?” . 

“TI love her, father. I mean to take her away, at once, 
take her and her child.” : 

“Run away with a married woman?” The Colonel’s pale 
face flushed slightly, less in anger than in shame, and his 
eyes fell from his son’s face. 

“T wish with all my heart it wasn’t so, of course; that she 
wasn’t married, or that she had left him long ago. But that 
can’t be helped. And I don’t see how a divorce could make 
any difference, and it would take a long time, and cause a 
dirty mess. He’s the kind who would fight it for spite, or 
blackmail. Perhaps later it will come. Now she must not 
suffer any more. I love her all the deeper for what she has 


150 TOGETHER 


been through. I want to make her life happy, make it up 
to her somehow, if I can.” 

The Colonel rose and with an old man’s slow step went over 
to the office door and locked it. 

‘Vickers,’ he said as he turned around from the door, 
still averting his shamed face, “you must be crazy, out 
of your mind, my son!” 

“No, father,’? the young man replied calmly; “I was 
never surer of anything in my life! I knew it would hurt 
you and mother, — you can’t understand. But you must 
trust me in this. It has to be.” 

“Why does it have to be?” 

“Because I love her!’’ he burst out. “ Because I want 
- to save her from that man, from the degradation she’s lived 
in. With me she will have some joy, at last,—her life, her 
soul, — oh, father, you can’t say these things to any one! 
You can’t give good reasons.’’ 

The old merchant’s face became stern as he replied : — 

“You wish to do all this for her, and yet you do not mean 
to marry her.” 

“T can’t marry her! I would to-day if I could. Some 
day perhaps we can, — for the sake of the child it would be 
better. But that makes no difference to me. It is the same 
as marriage for us —”’ 

“¢Toesn’t make any difference’ — ‘the same as marriage’ 
— what are you talking about?” 

The *young man tried to find words which would fulh 
express his feeling. He had come a long way these last hour 
in his ideas of life; he saw things naked and clear cut, with 
out dubious shades. But he had to realize now that what hi: 
soul accepted as incontrovertible logic was meaningless tv 
others. 

‘““T mean,”’ he said at last slowly, “that this woman is thi 
woman I love. I care more for her happiness, for her well 
being than for anything else in life. And :so no matter hoy 
we arrange to live, she is all that a woman can be to a man 
married or not as it may happen.” 


TOGETHER 151 


“To take another man’s wife and live with her!” the 
Colonel summed up bitterly. “No, Vick, you don’t mean 
that. You can’t do a dirty thing like that. Think it 
over !”’ 

So they argued a little while longer, and finally the old 
man pleaded with his son for time, offering to see Mrs. Conry, 
to help her get a separation from her husband, to send her 
abroad with her child, —to all of which Vickers replied 
steadily : — 

“ But I love her, father — you forget that! And she needs 
me now!”’ 

“Love her!’’ the old man cried. ‘“ Don’t call that love!” 


Vickers shut his lips and rose, very white. 

“T must go now. Let’s not say any more. We've never 
had any bitter words between us, father. You don't unde! 
stand this — do you think I would hurt you and mother, 
it didn’t have to bh. I gave up my own Litany when it. was 


only myself at stake; but I cannot give her up — and every- 
thing it will mean to her.” 

The Colonel turned away his face and refused to see his 
son’s outstretched hand. He could not think without a 
blush that his son should be able to contemplate this thing. 
Vickers, as he turned the handle of the door, recollected some- 
thing and came back. 

“Oh, you must cancel that stock agreement. I shouldn’t 
want to own it now that I have quit. The other things, the 
money, I shall keep. You would like me to have it, father, 
and it will be quite enough.” 

The old man made a gesture as if to wave aside the money 
matter. 

“Good-by, father!’’ he said slowly, tenderly. 

“You'll see your mother?” 

“Yes — I’m going there now.” 

Thus father and son parted. 


Nothing, it seemed to Vickers, after this painful half hour, 
could be as miserable as what he had been through, and as 


152 TOGETHER 


a matter of fact his interview with his mother was com- 
paratively easy. 

To Mrs. Price her son’s determination was merely an unex- 
pected outburst of wild folly, such as happened in other 
families, — coming rather late in Vick’s life, but by no means 
irremediable. Vickers had fallen into the hands of a design- 
ing woman, who intended to capture a rich man’s son. Her 
first thought was that the Colonel would have to buy Mrs. 
Conry off, as Mr. Stewart had done in a similar accident that 
befell Ted Stewart, and when Vickers finally made it plain 
to her that his was not that kind of case, she fell to berating 
him for the scandal he would create by “trapesing off to 
Europe with a singer.’”? Oddly enough that delicate mod- 
esty, like a woman’s, which had made it almost impossible 
for the Colonel to mention the affair, did not seem to trouble 
her. To live with another man’s wife was in the Colonel’s 
eyes a sin little short of incest, and more shocking than many 
kinds of murder. But his wife, with a deeper comprehension 
of the powers of her sex, of the appeal of woman to man, saw 
in it merely a weakness that threatened to become a family 
disgrace. When she found after an hour’s talk that her argu- 
ments made no impression, while Vickers sat, harassed and 
silent, his head resting on his hands, she burst into tears. 

“Tt’s just like those things you read of in the papers,” 
she sobbed, “those queer Pittsburg people, who are always 
doing some nasty thing, and no decent folks will associate 
- with them.” 

“Tt’s not the thing you do, mother; it’s the way\ you 


do it, the purpose, the feeling,’ the young man protested. — 


“And there won’t be a scandal, if that’s what’s troubling you. 
You can tell your friends that I have gone abroad suddenly 
for my health.” 


“Who would believe that? Do you think her husband’s - 


going to keep quiet ?’’ Mrs. Price sniffled, with considerable\ 


worldly wisdom. 


\ 


“Well, let them believe what they like. They'll forget 


me in a week.”’ 


| 


TOGETHER 153 


“Where are you going?” 

“To Europe, somewhere, —I haven’t thought about the 
place. I'll let you know.” 

“And how about her child?” 

“We shall take her with us.” 

“She wants her along, does she?” 

“Of course !”’ 

Vickers rose impatiently. 

“Good-by, mother.” 

She let him kiss her. 

“T shall come to see you sometimes, if you want me to.” 

“Oh, you’ll be coming back fast enough,” she retorted 
quickly. 

And then she straightened the sofa pillows where he had 
been sitting and picked up a book she had been reading. 
As Vickers went to his room to get a bag, Isabelle opened the 
door of her mother’s room, where she had been waiting for 
him. She put her arms about his neck, as she had that night 
of her marriage on the station platform at Grafton, and 
pressed him tightly to her. 

“Vick! Vick!” she cried. “That it had to be like this, 
your love! Like this!” 

“It had to be, Belle,’ he answered with a smile. “It comes 
to us in different ways, old girl.” 

“But you! You!” She led him by the hand to the 
sofa, where she threw herself, a white exhausted look coming 
into her face. He stroked her hair with the ends of his 
fingers. Suddenly she half turned, grasping his hand with 
both of hers. 

“Can you be happy — really happy?” 

“J think so; but even that makes no difference, perhaps. ~ 
I should do it all the same, if I knew it meant no happiness 
for me.” ! : 

She looked at him searchingly, trying to read his heart 
in his eyes. After the year of her marriage, knowing now 
the mystery of human relations, she wondered whether 
he might not be right. That precious something, pain 


154 TOGETHER 


or joy, which was wanting in her union he might find in | 
this forbidden by-path, in this woman who seemed to her 
so immeasurably beneath her brother. She kissed him, 
and he went away. 

When the hall door clicked, she rose from the lounge and 
dragged herself to the window to watch him, holding her 
breath, her heart beating rapidly, almost glad that he: was 
strong enough to take his fate in his hands, to test life, to 
break the rules, to defy reason! “Vick, dear Vick,’”’ she 
murmured. 

In the room below Mrs. Price, also, was looking out of the 
bay window, watching her son disappear down the avenue. 
She had not been reading, and she had heard him come down 
into the hall, but let him go without another word. He 
walked slowly, erect as the Colonel used to walk. Tears 
dropped from her eyes, —tears of mortification. For in 
her heart she knew that he would come back some day, this 
woman who had lured him having fallen from him like a dead 
leaf. She sat on at the window until the Colonel’s figure 
appeared in the distance coming up the avenue. His head 
was bent; he looked neither to the right nor to the left; 
and he walked very slowly, like an old man, dragging his 
feet after him. He was crushed. It would not have been 
thus if he had lost his fortune, the work of all his years. 
Such a fate he would have looked in the eye, with raised 
head... . 

That night Vickers and Stacia Conry left for New York, 
and a few days later Mrs. Price read their names in a list of 
outgoing passengers for Genoa. She did not show the list 
to the Colonel, and their son’s name was never mentioned 
in the house. 

When the people who knew the Prices intimately began to 
whisper, then chatter, they said many hard things of Vickers, 
chiefly that he was a Fool, a judgment that could not be gain- 
said. Nevertheless the heart of a Fool may be pure. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


ISABELLE did not regain her strength after the birth of 
her child. She lay nerveless and white, so that her husband, 
her mother, the Colonel, all became alarmed. The celebrated 
accoucheur who had attended her alarmed them still more. 

“Something’s wrong, —she couldn’t stand the strain. 
Oh, it’s another case of American woman,— too finely 
organized for the plain animal duties. A lot of my women 
patients are the same way. They take child-bearing hard, 
—damned hard. ... What’s the matter with them? I 
don’t know!” he concluded irritably. “She must just go 
slow until she gets back her strength.” 

She went “slow,” but Nature refused to assert itself, to 
proclaim the will to live. For months the days crept by with 
hardly a sign of change in her condition, and then began the 
period of doctors. The family physician, who had a reputa- 
tion for diagnosis, pronounced her case ‘“‘ anzemia and nervous 
debility.” “She must be built up, — baths, massage, 
distraction.”’ Of course she was not to nurse her child, and 
the little girl was handed over to a trained nurse. Then this 
doctor called in another, a specialist in nerves, who listened 
to all that the others said, tapped her here and there, and 
-wished the opinion of an obstetrical surgeon. After his 
examination there was a discussion of the advisability of 
“surgical interference,’ and the conclusion “to wait.” 

“It may be a long time — years — before Mrs. Lane fully 
recovers her tone,’’ the nerve specialist told the husband. 
“We must have patience. It would be a good thing to 
take her to Europe for a change.”’ 

This was the invariable suggestion that he made to his: 
wealthy patients when he saw no immediate results from his 

155 


156 _\ TOGETHER 


treatment. It could do no harm, Europe, and most of his ° 
patients liked the prescription. They returned, to be sure, 
in many cases in about the same condition as when they 
left, or merely rested temporarily, —but of course that was 
the fault of the patient. 

When Lane objected that it would ‘be almost impossible 
for him to leave his duties for a trip abroad and that he did 
not like to have his wife go without him, the BPE eaalist 
advised California : — 

“A mild climate where she can be out-of-doors and re- 
laxed.’’ 

Isabelle went to California with her mother, the trained 
nurse,.and the child. But instead of the ‘mild climate,” 
Pasadena happened to be raw and rainy. She disliked the 
hotel, and the hosts of idle, overdressed, and vulgar women. 
So her mother brought her back, as we have seen, and then 
there was talk of the Virginia Springs, “an excellent spring 
climate.”’ 

A new doctor was called in, who had his own peculiar 
régime of sprays and baths, of subcutaneous medicine, and 
then a third nerve specialist, who said, ‘We must find 
the right key,” and looked as if he might have it in his office. 

“The right key ?”’ 

“Her combination, the secret of her vitality. We must 
find it for her, — distraction, a system of physical exercises, 
perhaps. But we must occupy the mind. Those Christian 
Scientists have an idea,.you know, — not that I recommend 
their tomfoolery; but we must accomplish their results 
by scientific means.”” And he went away highly satisfied 
with his liberality if view. 

On one vital point the doctors were hopelessly divided. 
Some thought Isabelle should have another child, “as soon 
as may be,’’ —it was a chance that Nature might take to 
right matters. The others strongly dissented: a child in 
the patient’s present debilitated condition would be criminal. 
As these doctors seemed to have the best of the argument, 
it was decided that for the present the wife should remain 


TOGETHER 157 


sterile, and the physicians undertook to watch over the life’ 
process, to guard against its asserting its rights. 

The last illusions of romance seemed to go at this period. 
The simple old tale that a man and a woman loving each other 
marry and have the children that live within them and come 
from their mutual love has been rewritten for the higher 
classes of American women, with the aid of science. Health, 
economic pressure, the hectic struggle to survive in an 
ambitious world have altered the simple axioms of nature. 
Isabelle accepted easily the judgment of the doctors, — 
she had known so many-women in a like case. Yet when 
she referred to this matter in talking to Alice Johnston, she 
caught an odd look on her cousin’s face. 

“J wonder if they know, the doctors — they seem always 
to be finding excuses for women not to have children. .. . 
We’ve been all through that, Steve and I; and decided: we 
wouldn’t have anything to do with it, no matter what 
happened. It—tarnishes you somehow, and after all 
does it help? There’s Lulu Baxter, living in daily fear of 
having a child because they think they are too poor. He gets 
twenty-five hundred from the road — he’s under Steve, you 
know — and they live in a nice apartment with two servants 
and entertain. They are afraid of falling in the social scale, 
if they should live differently. But she’s as nervous as a 
witch, never wholly well, and they’ll just go on, as he rises 
and gets more money, adding to their expenses. They will 
never have money enough for children, or only for one, 
maybe, —no, I don’t believe it pays!” 

“But she’s so pretty, and they live nicely,”’ Isabelle pro- 
tested, and added, “There are other things to live for 
besides having a lot of children —”’ 

“What?” the older woman asked gravely. 

“Your husband’’; and thinking of John’s present homeless 
condition, she continued hastily, “and life itselt, —to be 
some one, — you owe something to yourself.” 

“Yes,” Alice assented, smiling, — “if we only knew what 
it was ! 1" 


158 TOGETHER 


“Besides if we were all like you, Alice dear, we should be 
paupers. Even we can’t afford —”’ 

“We should be paupers together, then! No, you can’t 
convince me — it’s against Nature.”’ 

“All modern life is against Nature,” the young woman 
retorted glibly; “just at present I regard Nature as a mighty 
poor thing.” 

She stretched her thin arms behind her head and turned 
on the lounge. 

“That’s why the people who made this country are dying 
out so rapidly, giving way before Swedes and Slavs and 
others, — because those people are willing to have children.”’ 

“Meantime we have the success !’”’ Isabelle cried languidly. 
‘“‘Aprés nous the Slavs, — we are the flower! An aristocracy 
is always nourished on sterility!” 


“Dr. Fuller!’ Alice commented. ... “So the Colonel 
is going with you to the Springs?” 
“Yes, poor old Colonel! —he must get .away — he’s 


awfully broken up,” and she added sombrely. ‘“That’s one. 
trouble with having children, — you expect them to think 
and act like you. You can’t be willing to let them be them- 
selves.”’ 

“But, Isabelle!” 

“Oh, I know what you are going to say about Vick. I 
have heard it over and over. John has said it. Mother has 
said it. Father looks it. You needn’t bother to say it, 
Alice!”? She glanced at hercousin mutinously. “Johnthought 
I was partly to blame; that I ought to have been able to 
control Vick. He speaks as if the poor boy were insane or 
drunk or something — because he did what he did!” 

‘And you?” 

Isabelle sat upright, leaning her head thoughtfully on her 
hands, and staring with bright eyes at Alice. 

“Do you want to know what I really believe? . . . I have 
done a lot of thinking these months, all by myself. Well, I 
admire Vick tremendously; he had the courage —”’ 

“Does that take courage?” 


TOGETHER 159 


“Yes! For a man like Vickers. ... Oh, I suppose 
she is horrid and not worth it —I only hope he will never 
find it out! But to love any one enough to be willing, to 
be glad to give up your life for him, for her — why, it is 
tremendous, Alice! ... Here is Tots,’’ she broke off as 
the nurse wheeled the baby through the hall, — “ Miss Marian 
Lane. ... Nurse, cover up her face with the veil so her 
ladyship won’t get frostbitten,” and Isabelle sank back again 
with a sigh on the lounge and resumed the thread of her 
thought. “And I am not so sure that what John objects 
to isn’t largely the mess, — the papers, the scandal, the fact 
they went off without waiting for a divorce and all that. 
Of course that wasn’t pleasant for respectable folk like the 
Lanes and the Prices. But why should Vickers have given 
up what seemed to him right, what was his life and hers, 
just for our prejudices about not having our names in the 
papers ?”’ 

“That wasn’t all!” 

“Well, I shall always believe in Vick, no matter what comes 
of it.... Marriage —the regular thing — doesn’t seem 
to be such a great success with many people, I know. Perhaps 
life would be better if more people had Vick’s courage !”’ 

Isabelle forced her point with an invalid’s desire to relieve 
a wayward feeling and also a childish wish to shock this good 
cousin, who saw life simply and was so sure of herself. 
Alice Johnston rose with a smile. 

“T hope you will be a great deal ee when you come 
back, dear.” 

“f I shall be — or I shall have an operation. I don’t intend 
to remain in the noble army of N.P.’s.”’ 

“ How is John?” 

‘Flourishing and busy —oh, tremendously busy! He 
might just as well live in New York or Washington for all 
I see of him.” 

“Steve says he is very clever and aincoeseal — you must. 
be so proud !”’ 

Isabelle smiled. “Of course! But sometimes I think 


160 TOGETHER 


I should like a substitute husband, one for everyday use, 
you know!” 

“There are plenty of that kind!” laughed Alice. “ But 
I don’t believe they would satisfy you wholly.” | 

“Perhaps not. ... How is Steve? Does he like his 
new work?” 

“Yes,’”’ Alice replied without enthusiasm. ‘“ He’s work- 
ing very hard, too.” 

“Oh, men love it, — it makes them feel important.” 

“Did you ever think, Belle, that men have difficulties to 
meet, — problems that we never dream of?” 

“Worse than the child-bearing question?” queried Isa- 
belle, kicking out the folds of her tea-gown with a slippered 
foot. 

“Well, different; harder, perhaps. ... Steve doesn’t 
talk them over as he used to with me.” 

“Too tired. John never talks to me about business. We 
discuss what the last doctor thinks, and how the baby 
is, and whether we'll take the Jackson house or build 
or live at the Monopole and go abroad, and Nan Lawton’s 
latest, — really vital things, you see! Business is such a 
bore.” 

The older woman seemed to have something on her mind 
and sat down again at the end of the lounge. 

“By the way,” Isabelle continued idly, “did you know 
that the Falkners were coming to St. Louis to live? John 
found Rob a place in the terminal work. It isn’t permanent, 
but Bessie was crazy to come, and it maybe an opening. She 
is &@ nice thing, — mad about people.’ 

“But, Isabelle,” her cousin persisted, “don’t you want 
~to know the things that make your husband’s life, — that 
go down to the roots?” 

“Tf you mean business, no, I don’t. Besides they are 
confidential matters, I suppose. He couldn’t make me 
understand. .. .” . 

“They have to face the fight, the men; make the decisions 
that count — for character.” 


TOGETHER 161. 


“Of course, — John attends to that side and I to mine. 
We should be treading on each other’s toes if I tried to decide 
his matters for him!” 

“But when they are questions of right and wrong —”’ 

“Don’t worry. Steve and John are all right. Besides 
they are only officers. You don’t believe all that stuff in the 
magazines about Senator Thomas and the railroads? John 
says that is a form of modern blackmail.” 

“JT don’t know what to believe,’’ the older woman replied. 
“IT know it’s terrible, —it’s like war!”’ 

“Of course it’s war, and men must do the fighting.” 

“And fight fair.’’ 

‘“‘Of course, — as fair as the others. What are you driving 
at?” 

“I wonder if the A. and P. always fights fair?”’ 

“Tt isn’t a charitable organization, my dear. ... But 
Steve and John are just officers. They don’t have to decide. 
They take their orders from headquarters and carry them 
out.” 

“No matter what they are?” 

“Naturally, —that’s what officers are for, isn’t it? If 
they don’t want to carry them out, they must resign.” 

“But they can’t always resign.”’ 

“Why not?” 

“Because of you and me and the children!”’ 

“Oh, don’t worry about it! They don’t worry. That’s 
- what I like a man for. If he’s good for anything, he isn’t 
perpetually pawing himself over.’’ 

This did not seem wholly to satisfy Alice, but she leaned 
over Isabelle and kissed her: — 

“Only get well, my dear, and paw some of your notions 
over, —it won’t do you any harm!” 

That evening when the Lanes were alone, after they had 
discussed the topics that Isabelle had enumerated, with the 
addition of the arrangements for the trip to the Springs, 
Isabelle asked casually: — 

“ John, is it easy to be honest in business ?”’ 

M 


162 TOGETHER 


“That depends,” he replied guardedly, “on the business 
and the man. Why?” 

“You don’t believe what those magazine articles say about 
the Senator and the others ?”’ 

“T don’t read them.” 

<9 Why ?” 

“Because the men who write them don’t understand the 
facts, and what they know they distort —for money.” 

“Um,” she observed thoughtfully. ‘But are there 
facts —like those? You know the facts.” 

“T don’t know all of t] em.” 

‘Are those you know straight or crooked?” she asked, 
feeling considerable interest in the question, now that it 
was started. 

“‘T don’t know what you would mean by crooked, — what 
is it you want to know?” 

‘‘Are you honest?” she asked with mild curiosity, “I 
mean in the way of railroad business. Of course I know 
you are other ways.” 

Lane smiled at her childlike seriousness. 

“T always Dry to do what seems to me right under the 
circumstances.” 

“But the circumstances are sometimes — queer?” 

“The circumstances are usually complex.” 

“The circumstances are complex,’ she mused aloud. 
“T’ll tell Alice that.” 

“What has Alice to de with it?” 

‘She seems bothered avout the circumstances — that’s 
all, —the circumstances and {Steve.”’ 

“T guess Steve can manage the circumstances by him- 
self,’ he replied coldly, turning over the evening paper. 
“She probably reads the magazines and believes all she 
hears.’’ 

‘“All intelligent women read the magazines — and believe 
what they hear or else what their husbands tell them,” 
she rejoined flippantly. Presently, as Lane continued to 
look over the stock page of the paper, she observed: — 


TOGETHER 163 


“Don’t you suppose that in Vickers’s case the circum- 
stances may have been — complex ?”’ 

Lane looked at her steadily. 

“T can’t see what that has to do with the question.” 

“Oh?” she queried mischievously. He considered the 
working of her mind as merely whimsical, but she had a 
sense of logical triumph over the man. Apparently he 
would make allowances of “circumstances’’ in business, 
his life, that he would not admit in private affairs. As he 
kissed her and was turning out the light, before joining 
the Colonel for another cigar, she asked: — 

“Supposing that you refused to be involved in circum- 
stances that were —complex? What would happen?” 

“What a girl!”’ he laughed cheerfully. ‘For one thing 
I think we should not be going to the Springs to-morrow 
in a private car, or buying the Jackson house —or any 
other. Now put it all out of your head and have a good 
rest.”’ 

He kissed her again, and she murmured wearily : — 

‘“‘1’m so useless, —they should kill things ike me! How 
can you love me?” 

She was confident that he did love her, that like so many 
husbands he had accepted her invalidism cheerfully, with 
an unconscious chivalry for the wife who instead of flower- 
ing forth in marriage had for the time being withered. His 
confidence, in her sinking moods like this, that it would all 
come right, buoyed her up. And John was a wise man as 
well as a good husband; the Colonel trusted him, admired 
him. Alice Johnston’s doubts slipped easily from her mind. _ 
Nevertheless, there were now two subjects of serious interest — 
that husband and wife would always avoid, — Vickers, and \, 
business honesty ! 

She lay there feeling weak and forlorn before the journey, 
preoccupied with herself. These days she was beset with 
a tantalizing sense that life was slipping past her just beyond . 
her reach, flowing like a mighty river to issues that she was 
not permitted to share. And while she was forced to lie 


164 TOGETHER 


useless on the bank, her youth, her own life, was somehow 
running out, too. Just what it was that she was missing 
she could not say, —something alluring, something more 
than her husband’s activity, than her child, something that 
made her stretch out longing hands in the dark. ... She 
would not submit to invalidism. 


CHAPTER XIX 


THe Virginia mountains made a narrow horizon of brill- 
iant blue. On their lower slopes the misty outlines of 
early spring had begun with the budding trees. Here and 
there the feathery forest was spotted by dashes of pink 
coolness where the wild peach and plum had blossomed, 
and the faint blue of the rhododendron bushes mounted to 
the sky-line. The morning was brilliant after a rain and 
the fresh mountain air blew invigoratingly, as Isabelle 
left the car on her husband’s arm. With the quick change 
of mood of the nervous invalid she already felt stronger, 
more hopeful. There was color in her thin face, and her 
eyes had again the vivacious sparkle that had been so largely 
her charm. 

‘“We must find some good horses,” she said to her father 
as they approached the hotel cottage which had been en- 
gaged; “I want to get up in those hills. Margaret promised 
to come for a week. ... Oh, I am going to be all right 
now !” | 

The hotel was one of those huge structures dropped down 
in the mountains or by the sea to provide for the taste for 
fresh air, the need for recuperation, of a wealthy society that 
crams its pleasures and its business into small periods, — 
days and hours. It rambled over an acre or two and pro- 
vided as nearly as possible the same luxuries and occupa- 
tions that its frequenters had at home. At this season it 
was crowded with rich people, who had sought the balm 
of early spring in the Virginia mountains after their weeks 
of frantic activity in the cities, instead of taking the steam- 
ers to Europe. They were sitting, beautifully wrapped in 
furs, on the long verandas, or smartly costumed were set- 
ting out for the links or for horseback excursions. The 
165 


166 TOGETHER 


Colonel and Lane quickly discovered acquaintances in the 
broker’s office where prominent “operators” were sitting, 
smoking cigars and looking at the country through large 
plate-glass windows, while the ticker chattered within hear- 
ing. There was music in the hall, and fresh arrivals with 
spotless luggage poured in from the trains. This mountain 
inn was a little piece of New York moved out into the 
country. 

But it was peaceful on the piazza of the cottage, which 
was somewhat removed from the great caravansary, where 
Isabelle lay and watched the blue recesses of the receding 
hills. Here her husband found her when it was time to 
say good-by. 

“You'll be very well off,’? he remarked, laying his hand 


affectionately on his wife’s arm. ‘The Stantons are here — 


you remember him at Torso? —and the Blakes from St. 
Louis, and no doubt a lot more people your father knows, — 
so you won’t be lonely. I have arranged about the horses 
and selected a quiet table for you.” 

“That is very good of you, —I don’t want to see people,” 
she replied, her eyes still on the hills. ‘‘When will you 
be back?” 

‘“‘In a week or ten days I can run up again and stay for 
a couple of days, over Sunday.” 

“You'll telegraph about Marian?” 

“Of course.’ 

And bending over to kiss her forehead, he hurried away. 
It seemed to her that he was always leaving, always going 
somewhere. When he was away, he wrote or telegraphed 
her each day as a matter of course, and sent her flowers 
every other day, and brought her some piece of jewellery 
when he went to New York. Yes, he was very fond of 
her, she felt, and his was a loyal nature, — she never need fear 
that in these many absences from his wife he might become 
entangled with women, as other men did. He was not that 
ALAC Psi 

The Colonel crossed the lawn in the direction of the golf 


ees 


TOGETHER 167 


links with a party of young old men. It was fortunate that 
the Colonel had become interested, almost boyishly, in 
golf; for since that morning when his son had left him he 
had lost all zest for business. A year ago he would never 
have thought it possible to come away like this for a month 
in the busy season. To Isabelle it was sad and also curious 
the way he took this matter of Vickers. He seemed to 
feel that he had but one child now, had put his boy quite 
out of his mind. He was gradually arranging his affairs — 
already there was talk of incorporating the hardware busi- 
ness and taking in new blood. And he had aged still more. 
But he was so tremendously vital,—the Colonel! No 
one could say he was heart-broken. He took more interest 
than ever in public affairs, like the General Hospital, and 
the Park Board. But he was different, as Isabelle felt, — 
abstracted, more silent, apparently revising his philosophy 
of life at an advanced age, and that is always painful. If 
she had only given him a man child, something male and 
vital like himself! He was fond of John, but no one could 
take the place of his own blood. That, too, was a curious 
limitation in the eyes of the younger generation. 

“‘Tsabelle !”’ 

She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern 
voice, and perceived Margaret Pole coming up the steps. 
With the grasp of Margaret’s small hands, the kiss, all the 
years since St. Mary’s seemed to fall away. The two women 
drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling enig- 
matically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read 
the record of the years, the experience of marriage on 
her. Coloring slightly, she turned away and drew up a 
chair. 

“Ts your husband with you?” Isabelle asked. “I do so 
want to meet him.” 

“No; I left him at my father’s with the children. He’s 
very good with the children,’ she added with a mocking 
‘smile, “and he doesn’t like little trips. He doesn’t under- 
stand how I can get up at five in the morning and travel. 


168 TOGETHER 


all day across country to see an old friend. . . . Men don’t 
understand things, do you think?” 

“So you are going abroad to live?” 

“Yes,” Margaret answered without enthusiasm. “We 
are going. to study yee? —the voice. My husband doesn’t 
like business!” 

Isabelle had hap that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, 
had not been successful in business. But the Poles snd 
the Lawtons were all comfortably off, and it was natural 
that he should follow his tastes. . 

“He has a very good voice,’ Margaret added. 

“How exciting —to change your whole life like that!” 
Isabelle exclaimed, fired by the prospect of escape from 
routine, from the known. | 

“Think so?’”’? Margaret remarked in a dull voice. “Well, 
perhaps. Tell me how you are — everything.” 

And they began to talk, and yet carefully ‘avoided what 
was uppermost in the minds of both, —‘ How has it been 
with you? How has marriage been? Has it given you all 
that you looked for? Are you happy?’ For in spite of all 
the education, the freedom so much talked about for women, 
that remains the central theme of their existence, — the 
emotional and material satisfaction of their natures through 
marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual among 
women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew 
many women who had been educated in colleges. ‘They 
are all like us,’’ she once said to Isabelle; ‘just like us. 
They want to marry a man who will give them everything, — 
and they aren’t any wiser in their choice, either. The 
only difference is that a smaller number of them have the 
chance to marry, and when they can’t be married, they have 
something besides cats and maiden aunts to fall back upon. 
But interests in common with their husbands, intellectual 
interests, —rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is 
always a specialist, and he doesn’t care for feminine amateur- 
.ishness. An acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the 
poor doesn’t broaden the breakfast table, not a little bit.” 


TOGETHER 169 


When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought 
her intelligent and women cynical. Isabelle felt that this 
cynicism had grown upon her. It appeared in little things, 
as when she said: ‘‘I can stay only a week. I must see 
to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall 
never sail if I don’t go back and get at it. Men are supposed 
to be practical and attend to the details, but they don’t 
if they can get out of them.”’ When Isabelle complimented 
her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a mocking 
grimace: ‘Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes 
first usually.” Isabelle had to admit that Margaret’s deli- 
cate, girlish face had grown strangely old and grave. The 
smile about the thin lips was there, but it was a mocking 
or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath 
the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine 
face, —a record not easily read, however. They fell to talk- 
ing over the St. “Mary’ s girls. 

“‘ Aline, — have you seen.much of her?’”’ Margaret asked. 

““Not as much as I hoped to, —I have been so useless,”’ 
Isabelle replied. ‘“‘She’s grown queer!”’ 

“ Queer ?”’ 

“She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny 
way, —always in a mess. Of course they haven’t. much 
money, but they needn’t be so — squalid, — the children 
and the mussy house and all.” 

“Aline doesn’t care for things,’ Margaret observed. 

“But one must care enough to be clean! And she has 
gone in for fads, —she has taken to spinning and weaving 
and designing jewellery and I don’t know what.” 

“That is her escape,’ Margaret explained. 

“Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful 
for the children.” ; 

“What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and 
mend and keep a tidy house? That would take all the 
poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn’t it better for 
_her husband and for the children that she should keep herself 
alive and give them something better than a good housewife?”’ 


170 TOGETHER 


‘Keep herself alive by making weird cloths and impos- 
sible bracelets ?”’ 

Margaret laughed at Isabelle’s philistine horror of the 
Goring household, and amused herself with suggesting more 
of the philosophy of the Intellectuals, the creed of Woman’s 
Independence. She pointed out that Aline did not inter- 
fere with Goring’s pursuit of his profession though it might 
not interest her or benefit her. Why should Goring inter- 
fere with Aline’s endeavors to develop herself, to be some- 
thing more than a mother and a nurse? 

‘She has kept something of her own soul, — that is it!” 

“Her own soul!’’ mocked Isabelle. “If you were to 
take a meal with them, you would wish there was less soul, 
and more clean table napkins.” r ; 

“My dear little bourgeoise,” Margaret commented with 
amusement, “you must get a larger point of view. The 
housewife ideal is doomed. Women won’t submit to it, — 
intelligent ones. And Goring probably likes Aline better 
as she is than he would any competent wife of the old sort.” 

“T don’t believe any sane man likes to see his children 
dirty, and never know where to find a clean towel, — don’t 
tell me!” 

“Then men must change their characters,’ Margaret 
replied vaguely; ‘‘we women have been changing our char- 
acters for centuries to conform to men’s desires. It’s time 
that the men adjusted themselves to us.”’ 

“T wonder what John would say if I told him he must 
change his character,’’ mused Isabelle. 

“There is Cornelia Woodyard,’? Margaret continued; 
‘““she combines the two ideals — but she is very clever.” 

‘“We never thought so at St. Mary’s.”’ / 

‘“That’s because we judged her by woman’s standards, 
sentimental ones, — old-fashioned ones. But she is New.” 

“How new?” asked Isabelle, who felt that she had been 
dwelling in a dark place the past three years. 

“Why, she made up her mind just what she wanted out 
of life, —a certain kind of husband, a certain kind of mar- 


ae 


TOGETHER 171 


ried life, a certain set of associates, —and she’s got just 
what she planned. She isn’t an opportunist like most of 
us, who take the husbands we marry because they are there, 
we don’t know why, and take the children they give us 
because they come, and live and do what turns up in the 
circumstances chosen for us by the Male. No, Conny is 
very clever!” 

“But how?” 

“Eugene Woodyard is not a rich man, —Conny was 
not after money, —but he is a clever lawyer, well con- 
nected, —in with a lot of interesting people, and has pos- 
sibilities. Conny saw those and has developed them, — that 
has been her success. You see she combines the old and 
the new. She makes the mould of their life, but she works 
through him. As a result she has just what she wants, 
and her husband adores her, — he is the outward and visible 
symbol of Conny’s inward and material strength !”’ 

Isabelle laughed, and Margaret continued in her pleasant 
drawl, painting the Woodyard firmament. 

“She understood her man better than he did himself. 
She knew that he would never be a great money-getter, 
hadn’t the mental or the physical qualifications for it. So 
she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of gentlemanly 
politician. She’ll make him Congressman or better, — 
much better! Meantime she has given him a delightful 
home, one of the nicest I know, —on a street down 
town near a little park, where the herd does not know enough 
to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of 
people I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!” | 

“And we thought her coarse,’’? mused Isabelle. 

“Perhaps she is, —I don’t think she is fine. But a strong 
hand is rarely fine. I don’t think she would hesitate to 
use any means to arrive, —and that is Power, my dear 
little girl!” 

Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips. 

“‘T must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the 
hills,” she said lightly. ‘‘We’ll meet at luncheon. By the 


172 TOGETHER 


way, I ran across a cousin of mine coming in on the train, — 
a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close enough 
to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet 
you, —he is a great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, 
I should say, — Tom Cairy. ... He was at college with 
your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the after- 
noon if you say so. He’s amusing, Thomas; but I don’t 
vouch for him. Good-by, girl.” 

Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of 
the lawn, walking leisurely, her head raised towards the 
mountains. ‘She is not happy,’ thought Isabelle. ‘There 
is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it is always 
so!’ Margaret had given her so much to think about, with 
her sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt 
extraordinarily refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the 
blue hills, was thinking, ‘She is still the girl, — she doesn’t 
know herself yet, does not know life!’ Her lips smiled 
wistfully, as though to add: ‘But she is eager. She 
will have to learn, as we all do.’ Thus the two young 
women, carefully avoiding any reference to the thought 
nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half hour what 
each wanted to know... . 

After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety 
of food, in the crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Mar- 
garet with Cairy sought refuge in one of the foot-paths that 
led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left leg with a 
perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn 
tinge, smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Mar- 
garet’s, were recessed beneath delicate brows. He had 
pleased Isabelle by talking to her about Vickers, whom he 
-had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and 
naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he 
devoted himself to her quite personally, while Margaret 
walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of seeing but one woman 
at a time, no matter what the circumstances might be, 
because his emotional horizon was always limited. That 
was one reason why he was liked so much by women. He 


| 
; 


TOGETHER 173 


had a good deal to say about the Woodyards, especially 
Conny. 

“She is so sure in 1 judgments,” he said. ‘I always 
show her everything I write!”’ (He had already explained 
that he was a literary “ jobber,”’ as he called it, at the Springs 
to see a well-known Wall Street man for an article on “the 
other side”’ that he was preparing for The People’s Maga- 
zine, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his 
magazine efforts.) 

“But I did not know that Conny was literary,’’ Isabelle 
remarked in surprise. 

The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity. 

“T don’t know that she is what you mean by literary; 
perhaps that is the reason she is such a good judge. She 
knows what people want to read, at least what the editors 
think they want and will pay for. If Con — Mrs. Wood- 
yard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If 
she throws it down, I might as well save postage stamps.” 

“A valuahle friend,’’ Margaret called back lightly, “for 
a struggling man of letters!”’ 

“Rather,” Cairy agreed. ‘ You see,” turning to Isabelle 
again, “that sort of judgment is worth reams of literary 
criticism.” 

“Tt’s practical.” 

“Yes, that is just what she is, — the genius of the prac- 
tical; it’s an instinct with her. That is why she can 
give really elaborate dinners in her little house, and you 
have the feeling that there are at least a dozen servants 
where they ought to be, and all that.” 

From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and 
insensibly to Cairy’s life there. Before they had turned 
back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame young Southerner 
had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress 
to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in 
the various ways that modern genius has found as a sub- 
- stitute for Grub Street. He had also told her that New York 
was the only place one could live in, if one was interested 


174 TOGETHER 


in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the com- 
ing art of America, — ‘‘real American drama with blood 
in it”; and had said something about the necessity of 
a knowledge of life, “‘a broad understanding of the national 
forces,” if a man were to write anything worth while. 

“You mean dinner-parties?’’ Margaret asked at this 
PEGE 

When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with 
Isabelle. 

“Tt’s the only sport I can indulge in,” he said, referring 
to his physical infirmity, “and I don’t get much of it in 
New York.” 

As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mis- 
chievously : — 

“Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets 
you know a good deal about himself all at once.’ 

“He is so interesting — and appealing, don’t you think 
so, with those eyes? Isn’t it a pity he is lame?” ; 

“T don’t know about that. He’s used that, lameness of 
his very effectively. It’s procured him no end of sympathy, 
and sympathy is what Thomas likes, from women. He 
will tell you all about it some time, — how his negro nurse 
was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step 
when he was a baby.” 

“We don’t have men like him in St. Louis,” Isabelle 
reflected aloud; ‘‘men who write or do things that are really 
interesting, — it is all business or gossip. I should like to 
see Conny, — it must be exciting to live in New York, and 
be somebody !”’ 

“Come and try it; you will, I suppose?” 

In spite of Margaret’s gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle 
enjoyed Cairy. He was the kind of man she had rarely 
seen and never known: by birth a gentleman, by education 
and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense and the 
charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found 
the means to run about the world — the habited part of 
it —a good deal, and had always managed to meet the right 





TOGETHER 175 


people, —the ones ‘‘whose names mean something.’ He 
was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To 
Isabelle his rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the 
opera, books, was a revelation of some of that flowing 
stream of life which she felt she was missing. And he gave 
her the pleasant illusion of “being worth while.” The 
way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the 
veranda steps, awaiting her least word, flattered her woman’s 
sympathy. When he left for Washington, going, as he 
said, “where the People’s call me,’ she missed him dis- 
tinctly. 

“‘T hope I shall meet him again 

“You will,’ Margaret replied. ‘Thomas is the kind one 
meets pretty often if you are his sort. And I take it you 
are !”’ 
_ Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her 

young cousin or piqued because of a sentimental encounter 
in their youth. Cairy had hinted at something of this kind. 
Margaret patted Isabelle’s pretty head. 

“My little girl,’ she mocked, ‘‘how wonderful the world 
is, and all the creatures in it!” 


{2 


From this month’s visit at the Springs the Colonel got 
some good golf, Mrs. Price a vivid sense of the way people 
threw their money about these days (“‘They say that Wall 
Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar bill 
when he left!’’). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscella- 
neous assortment of ideas, the dominant one being that 
intelligent Americans who really wished to have interesting 
lives went East to live, particularly to New York. And 
incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her 
consciousness the belief that the world was changing its 
ideas about women and marriage, ‘‘and all that.’ She 
desired eagerly to be in the current of these new ideas. 


CHAPTER XX 


“Wat makes a happy marriage?”’ Rob Falkner queried 
in his brutal and ironical mood, which made his wife shiver 
for the proprieties of pleasant society. It was at one of 
Bessie’s famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and Darnells 
were present. 

“A good cook and a good provider,” Lane suggested 
pleasantly, to keep the topic off conversational reefs. 

“A husband who thinks everything you do just right!” 
sighed Bessie. 

_ “Plenty of money and a few children — for appearances,” 
some one threw in. 

Isabelle remarked sagely, “‘A husband who knows what 
is best for you in the big things, and a wife who does what 
is best in the small ones.” 

“Unity of Purpose — Unity of Souls,’ Tom Darnell 
announced in his oratorical voice, with an earnestness that 
made the party self-conscious. His wife said nothing, and 
Falkner summed up cynically : — | 

“You’ve won, Lane! The American husband must be 
a good provider, but it doesn’t follow that the wife must 
bea good cook. Say a good entertainer, and there you have a 
complete formula of matrimony: PrRovipER (Hustler, Money- 
getter, Liberal) and EnrerraIner (A woman pretty, charm- 
ing, social).’’ 

“Here’s to the Falkner household, —the perfect ex- 
ample!” \ 

Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of 
masculine deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, 
looking back with the experience of after years, remem- 
bered this “puppy-dog” conversation. How young they 


all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, re- — 


176 


—— «x - 2 
— ies 


TOGETHER 177 


membered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the 
way home that night Lane had remarked to his wife:— 

“‘ Falkner is a queer chap, — he was too personal to-night.” 

“‘T suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and 
extravagant. He looked badly to-night. And he told me 
he had to take an early train to examine some new work.” 

Lane shrugged his shoulders, as does the man of imper- 
turbable will, perfect digestion, and constant equilibrium, 
for the troubles of a weaker vessel. 

“Tf he doesn’t like what his wife does, he should have 
character enough to control her. Besides he should have 
known all that before he married!” 

Isabelle smiled at this piece of masculine complacency, — 
as if a man could know any essential fact about a woman 
from the way she did her hair to the way she spent money 
before he had lived with her! 

“T do hope he will get a better place,’”’ Isabelle remarked 
good-naturedly. ‘It would do them both so much good.” 

As we have seen, Falkner’s chance came at last through 
Lane, who recommended him to the A. and P. engineer 
in charge of the great terminal works that the road had 
undertaken in St. Louis. The salary of the new position 
was four thousand dollars a year, —a very considerable 
advance over the Torso position, and the work gave Falk- 
ner an opportunity such as he had never had before. The 
railroad system had other large projects in contemplation 
also. 

“Bessie has written me such a letter, —the child!” 
Isabelle told her husband. ‘‘ You would think they had 
inherited a million. And yet she seems sad to leave Torso, 
after all the ragging she gave the place. She has a good 
word to say even:for Mrs. Fraser!” 

Bessie Falkner was one of those who put down many 
small roots wherever chance places them. She had settled 
into Torso more solidly than she knew until she came to 
pull up her roots and put them down in a large, strange 
city. ‘‘We won’t know any one there,’ she said dolefully 

N 


178 TOGETHER 


to her Torso friends. ‘‘The Lanes, of course; but they 
are such grand folk now — and Isabelle has all her old 
friends about her.’”? Nevertheless, it scarcely entered her 
mind to remain “‘in this prairie village all our days.”’ Bessie 
had to the full the American ambition to move on and up 
as far as possible... . 

Fortune, having turned its attention to the Falkners, 
seemed determined to smile on them this year. An uncle 
of Bessie’s died on his lonely ranch in Wyoming, and when 
the infrequent local authorities got around to settling his 
affairs, they found that he had left his little estate to Eliza- 
beth Bissell, who was now Mrs. Robert Falkner of Torso. 
The lonely old rancher, it seemed, had remembered the pretty, 
vivacious blond girl of eighteen, who had taken the trouble 
to show him the sights of Denver the one time he had visited 
his sister ten years before. Bessie, amused at his eccentric 
appearance, had tried to give “Uncle Billy” a good time. 
“Uncle Billy,’”? she would say, “you must do this,—you 
will remember it all your life. Uncle Billy, won’t you lunch 
with me down town to-day? You must go to the theatre, 
while you are here. Uncle, I am going to make you a 
necktie!’’ So she had chirped from morning until night, 
flattering, coaxing, and also making sport of the old man. 
“Bess has a good heart,’’ her mother said to Uncle Bill, 
and it must be added Bessie also had a woman’s instinct 
to please a possible benefactor. Uncle Billy when he re- 
turned to the lonely ranch wrote a letter to his pretty niece, 
which Bessie neglected to answer. Nevertheless, when 
Uncle Billy made ready to die, he bestowed all that he had 
to give upon the girl who had smiled on him once. 

Thus Bessie’s purring good nature bore fruit. Before 
the property could be sold, the most imaginative ideas about 
her inheritance filled Bessie’s dreams. Day and night she 
planned what they would do with this fortune, — everything 
from a year in Europe to new dresses for the children! 
When it came finally in the form of a draft for thirteen 
thousand and some odd dollars, her visions were dampened 


TOGETHER 179 


for a time, — so many of her castles could not be acquired 
for thirteen thousand and some odd dollars. 

Falkner was for investing the legacy in Freke’s mines, 
which, he had good reason to believe, were better than gold 
mines. But when Bessie learned that the annual dividends 
would only be about twelve hundred dollars, she demurred. 
That was too slow. Secretly she thought that “if Rob 
were only clever about money,” he might in a few years 
make a real fortune out of this capital. There were men she 
had known in Denver, as she told her husband, “who hadn’t 
half of that and who had bought mines that had brought 
them hundreds of thousands of dollars.”’” To which remark, 
Rob had replied curtly that he was not in that sort of busi- 
ness and that there were many more suckers than million- 
naires in Denver — and elsewhere. 

So, finally, after paying some Torso debts, it came down 
to buying a house in St. Louis; for the flat that they had 
first rented was crowded and Bessie found great difficulty 
-in keeping a servant longer than a week. Rob thought 
that it would be more prudent to rent a house for six to 
nine hundred than to buy outright or build, until they saw 
how his work for the A. and P. developed. But Bessie 
wanted a home, —a house of her own. So they began the 
wearisome search for a house. Bessie already had her 
views about the desirable section to live in, — outside the 
smoke in one of ‘‘those private estate parks,’’ — where the 
Lanes were thinking of settling. (A few months had been 
sufficient for Bessie to orientate herself socially in her new 
surroundings.) ‘That’s where all the nice young people 
are going,’ she announced. In vain Rob pointed out that 
there were no houses to be bought for less than eighteen 
thousand in this fashionable neighborhood: ‘ You never 
dare!’’ she retorted reproachfully. ‘You have to take 
risks if you want anything in this world! How many houses 
in St. Louis that aren’t mortgaged do you suppose there 
are ?”’ 

“But there is only about eleven thousand of Uncle Billy’s - 


180 TOGETHER 


money left, and those houses in Buena Vista Park cost from 
eighteen to twenty-four thousand dollars.” 

“ And they have only one bath-room,”’ sighed Bessie. 

The summer went by in “looking,” and the more houses 
they looked at the less satisfied was Bessie. She had in the 
foreground of her mind an image of the Lanes’ Torso house, 
only “more artistic”; but Falkner convinced her that such a 
house in St. Louis would cost thirty thousand dollars at the 
present cost of building materials. 

“Tt is so difficult,” she explained to Mrs. Price, ‘‘to find 
anything small and your own, don’t you know?” She 
arched her brows prettily over her dilemma. Mrs. Price, 
who, in spite of the fascination that Bessie exerted, had 
prim ideas ‘of what young persons in moderate circum- 
stances”? should do, suggested that the Johnstons were buy- 
ing a very good house in the new suburb of Bryn Mawr on 
the installment plan. 

‘As if we could bury ourselves in that swamp, — we might 
as well stay in Torso!” Bessie said to her husband dis- 
gustedly. 

Falkner reflected that the train service to Bryn Mawr made 
it easier of access to his work than the newer residential 
quarter inside the city which Bessie was considering. But 
that was the kind of remark he had learned not to make... . 

In the end it came to their building. For Bessie found 
nothing, “‘small and pretty, and just her own,” with three 
bath-rooms, two maids’ rooms, ete., in any “possible” 
neighborhood. She had met at a dinner-party an attractive 
young architect, who had recently come from the East to 
settle in St. Louis. Mr. Bowles prepared some water-color 
sketches which were so pretty that she decided to engage him. 
With misgivings Rob gave his consent. A narrow strip of 
frontage was found next a large house in the desired section. 
They had to pay three thousand dollars for the strip of land. 
Mr. Bowles thought the house could be built for eight or ten 
thousand dollars, depending on the price of materials, which 
seemed to be going up with astonishing rapidity. 


TOGETHER 181 


Then Bessie plunged into plans. It was a gusty March 
day when the Falkners went out with the architect to con- 
sider the lot, and spent an afternoon trying to decide how 
to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole matter, 
listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in 
April they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The 
contracts were not yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, 
and there was a strike in the brick business, the kind of 
brick they had chosen being unobtainable, while hardware 
seemed unaccountably precious. Already it was impos- 
sible to build the house for less than twelve thousand, 
even after sacrificing Bessie’s private bath. Falkner had 
consented to the mortgage, — “only four thousand,” Bessie 
said; “we'll save our rent and pay it off in a year or two!”’ 
Bessie’s periods of economy were always just dawning! 

Falkner, looking at the contractor’s tool shed, had a sense 
of depressing fatality. From the moment that the first 
spadeful of ground had been dug, it seemed to him that the 
foundation of his domestic peace had begun to crumble. 
But this depression was only an attack of the grippe, he said 
to himself, and he tried to take an interest in the architect’s 
description of how they should terrace the front of the lot.... 

Of course, as the novelists tell us, the man of Strong Will, 
of Mature Character, of Determined Purpose, would not have 
allowed his wife to entangle him in this house business (or in 
matrimony, perhaps, in the first instance)! But if society 
were composed of men of 8. W., M.C., and D. P., there would 
be no real novels, — merely epics of Slaughter and Success, 
of Passionate Love and Heroic Accomplishment. ... At 
this period Falkner still loved his wife, — wanted to give her 
every gratification within his power, and some just beyond, 
—though that love had been strained by five hard 
years, when her efforts as an economic partner had not 
been intelligent. (Bessie. would have scorned such an 
unromantic term as “economic partner.’’) They still had 
their times of amiable understanding, of pleasant comrade- 
ship, even of passionate endearment. But by the time the 


182 . TOGETHER 


young architect’s creation at number 26 Buena Vista Pleas. 
ance had become their residence, that love was in a mori- 
bund condition. ... Yet after all, as Bessie sometimes 
reminded him, it was her money that was building the house, 
at least the larger part of it; and further it was all her life 
that was to be spent in it, presumably. The woman’s home 
was her world. 

Thus, in the division that had come between them, the 
man began to consider his wife’s rights, what he owed to her 
as a woman that he had taken under his protection, —a 
very dangerous state of mind in matrimony. If he had 
discovered that her conception of the desirable end of life 
was not his, he must respect her individuality, and so far as 
possible provide for her that which she seemed to need. 
The faithful husband, or dray-horse interpretation of mar- 
riage, this. 


am 


CHAPTER XXI 


IF it takes Strong Will, Mature Character, and Determined 
Purpose to live effectively, it takes all of that and more — 
humor and patience — to build a house in America, unless 
one can afford to order his habitation as he does a suit of 
clothes and spend the season in Europe until the contractor 
and the architect have fought it out between them. But Bessie 
was @ young woman of visions. She had improved all her 
opportunities to acquire taste, —the young architect said 
she had ‘very intelligent ideas.’ And he, Bertram Bowles, 
fresh from Paris, with haunting memories of chateaux and 
villas, and a knowledge of what the leading young architects 
of the East were turning out, had visions too, in carrying out 
this first real commission that he had received in St. Louis. 
“Something chic, with his stamp on it,’ he said... . 

The hours with the contractors to persuade them that they 
could do something they had never seen done before! The 
debates over wood finish, and lumber going up while you 
talked! The intricacies of heating, plumbing, electric 
lighting, and house telephones — when all men are dis- 
covered to be liars! Falkner thought it would be easier to 
lay out the entire terminal system of the A. and P. than to 
build one “‘small house, pretty and just your own, you know.”’ 
Occasionally even Bessie and, the polite Bertram Bowles 
fell out, when Falkner was called in to arbitrate. Before the 
question of interior decoration came up the house had already 
cost fourteen thousand dollars, which would necessitate a 
mortgage of six thousand dollars at once. Here Falkner 
put his foot down, — no more; they would live in it with bare 
walls. Bessie pleaded and sulked, —‘‘only another thou- 
sand.”” And “not to be perfectly ridiculous,’ Falkner was 
forced to concede another thousand. ‘‘Not much when 

183 


184 TOGETHER 


you consider,’”’ as the architect said to Bessie. ... Time 
dragged on, and the house was not ready. The apartment 
hotel into which they had moved was expensive and bad for 
the children. In June Falkner insisted on moving into the 
unfinished house, with carpenters, painters, decorators still 
hanging on through the sultry summer months. 

“T met your poor little friend Mrs. Falkner at Sneeson’s 
this morning,’’ Nan Lawton said to Isabelle. ‘She was look- 
ing over hangings and curtains for her house. ... She is 
nothing but a bag of bones, she’s so worn. That husband of 
hers must be a brute to let her wear herself all out. She 
was telling me some long yarn about their troubles with the 
gas men, — very amusing and bright. She is a charming 
little thing.”’ 

‘““Yes,’’ Isabelle replied; “‘I am afraid the house has been 
too much for them both.” 

She had been Bessie’s confidant in all her troubles, and 
sympathized — who could not sympathize with Bessie? — 
though she thought her rather foolish to undertake so much. 

“We'll simply have to have rugs, I tell Rob,’’ Bessie said 
to her. ‘He is in such bad humor these days, and says we 
must go on the bare floors or use the old Torso carpets. 
Fancy !” : 

And Isabelle said, as she was expected to say, ‘‘Of course 
you will have to have rugs. They are having a sale at 
Moritz’s, —some beauties and cheap.” 

Yet she had a sneaking sympathy for Falkner. Isabelle 
did not suspect that she herself was the chief undoing of the 
Falkner household, nor did any one else suspect it. It was 
Bessie’s ideal of Isabelle that rode her hard from the begin- 
ning of her acquaintance with the Lanes. And it was Isabelle — 
who very naturally introduced them to most of the people 
they had come to know in their new world. Isabelle herself — 
had much of her mother’s thrift and her father’s sagacity _ 
in practical matters. She would never have done what Bes- — 
sie was doing in Bessie’s circumstances. But in her own cir-— 
cumstances she did unconsciously a great deal more, — | 


. 


{ 


TOGETHER 185 


and she disliked to fill her mind with money matters, con- 
sidering it vulgar and underbred to dwell long on them. 
The rich and the very wise can indulge in these aristocratic 
refinements! Isabelle, to be sure, felt flattered by Bessie’s 
admiring discipleship,— who does not like to lead a friend? 
She never dreamed of her evil influence. The power of sug- 
gestion, subtle, far-reaching, ever working on plastic human 
souls! Society evolves out of these petty reactions. 

The rugs came. 

“We simply have to have rugs,— the house calls for it,” 
asserted Bessie, using one of Mr. Bertram Bowles’s favorite 
expressions. 

‘““My purse doesn’t,’ growled Falkner. 

Nevertheless Bessie selected some pretty cheap rugs at 
Moritz’s, which could be had on eredit. In the great rug 
room of the department store she met Alice Johnston, who 
was looking at a drugget. The two women exchanged expe- 
riences as the perspiring clerks rolled and rerolled rugs. 

“Yes, we shall like Bryn Mawr,’ Mrs. Johnston said, 
“now that the foliage covers up the tin cans and real estate 
signs. The schools are really very good, and there is plenty 
of room for the boys to make rough house in. We are to 
have a garden another year... . Oh, yes, it is rural middle 
class,— that’s why I can get drugget for the halls.” 

Bessie thought of her pretty house and shuddered. 

“We are planning to call and see the house — Isabelle 
says it’s wonderful — but it will have to be on a Sunday — 
the distance — 

“Can’t you come next Sunday for iene? I will ask 
Isabelle and her husband,” Bessie interrupted hospitably, 
proud to show off her new toy. 

And on Sunday they all had a very good time and the new 
“toy”? was much admired, although the paint was still 
sticky, —the painter had been optimistic when he took the 
contract and had tried to save himself later, —the colors 
wrong, and the furniture, which had done well enough in 
Torso, looked decidedly shabby. 


186 TOGETHER 


“Tt’s the prettiest house I know,” Isabelle said warmly, 
and Bessie felt repaid. 

She was very tired, and to-day looked worn. The new toy 
was dragging her out. As the long St. Louis summer drew 
to an end, she was always tired. Some obscure woman’s 
trouble, something in the delicate organism that had never 
been quite right, was becoming acutely wrong. She lived 
in fear of having another child,— the last baby had died. 
By the new year she was in care of Isabelle’s specialist, who 
advised au operation. When that was over, it was nearly 
spring, and though she was still delicate, she wished to give 
some dinners ‘‘to return their obligations.” Falkner ob- 
jected for many reasons, and she thought him very hard. 

“Tt is always sickness and babies for me,’”’ she pouted; 
‘“‘and when I want a little fun, you think we can’t afford it or 
something.” 

Her hospitable heart was so bent on this project, it seemed 
so natural that she should desire to show off her toy, after 
her struggle for it, so innocent ‘‘to have our friends about 
us,’ that he yielded in part. A good deal might be told 
about that dinner, from an economic, a social, a domestic 
point of view. But we must lose it and hastenon. Imagine 
merely, what a charming woman like Bessie Falkner, whose 
scheme of the universe was founded on the giving of “ pleas- 
ant little dinners,’ would do, — a woman who was making her 
life, building her wigwam, filling it with those she wished to 
have as friends, and you will see it all. It was, of course, a 
great success. Mrs. Anstruthers Leason said of the hostess 
(reported by Nan Lawton through Isabelle), ‘‘ Little Mrs. 
Falkner has the real social gift, —a very rare thing among 
our women!’ And when an invitation came from Mrs. 
Anstruthers Leason to dinner and her box at the French 
opera, Bessie was sure that she had found her sphere. 


Falkner seemed to Bessie these days to be growing harder, 
—he was “exacting,” “unsympathetic,” ‘ tyrannical.” 
“He won’t go places, and he won’t have people, — isn’t nice 


TOGETHER 187 


to them, even in his own house,” Bessie said sadly to Isa- 
belle. ‘‘I suppose that marriage usually comes to that: 
the wife stands for bills and trouble, and the husband scolds. 
Most people squabble, don’t they?” 

“Of course he loves you, dear,’’ Isabelle consoled her. 
“American husbands always take their wives for granted, 
as Nannie says. A foreigner pays attentions to his wife 
after marriage that our husbands don’t think are necessary 
once they have us. Our husbands take us too much as a 
matter of course, —and pay the bills!” 

Bessie felt and said that Rob took life too hard, worried 
too much. After all, when a man married a woman and had 
children, he must expect a certain amount of trouble and 
anxiety. She wasn’t sure but that wives were needed to 
keep men spurred to their highest pitch of working efficiency. 
She had an obscure idea that the male was by nature lazy 
and self-indulgent, and required the steel prod of necessity 
to do his best. work. As she looked about her among the 
struggling households, it seemed such was the rule, — that 
if it weren’t for the fact of wife and children and bills, the 
men would deteriorate. ... Naturally there were differ- 
ences, — “squabbles,” as she called them; but she would have 
been horrified if any one had suggested that these petty 
squabbles, the state of mind they produced or indicated, were 
infinitely more degrading, more deteriorating to them both, 
than adultery. It never entered her, mind that either she 
or her husband could be unfaithful, that Falkner could ever 
care for any other woman than her. ‘‘ Why, we married for 
love!” 


Love! That divine unreason of the gods, which lures man 
as a universal solvent of his sorrow, the great solution to the 
great enigma! Where was it? Bessie asked when Rob 
passed her door in the morning on his way to his solitary 
breakfast without a word of greeting or a kiss, and finally 
left the house without remembering to go upstairs again. 
And Falkner asked himself much the same thing, when 


188 TOGETHER 


Bessie persisted in doing certain things ‘‘ because everybody 
does,’”’ or when he realized that after two years in his new 
position, with a five hundred dollars’ increase in his salary 
the second year, he was nearly a thousand dollars in debt, and 
losing steadily each quarter. Something must be done — 
and by him! —for in marriage, he perceived with a certain 
bitterness, Man was the Forager, the Provider. And in 
America if he didn’t bring in enough from the day’s hunt to 
satisfy the charming squaw that he had made his consort, 
why, —he must trudge forth again and get it! .A poor 
hunter does not deserve the embellishment of a Bessie and 
two pretty children. 

So he went forth to bring in more game, and he read no 
poetry these days. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE calm male observer might marvel at Bessie’s elation 
over the prospect of sitting in Mrs. Anstruthers Leason’s box 
at the performance of ‘“ Faust’”’ given by the French Opera 
Company on tour. But no candid woman will. It could be 
explained partly by the natural desire to associate with 
entertaining, well-dressed folk, who were generally considered 
to be ‘‘the best,” “the leaders” of local society. Sitting 
there in the stuffy box, which was a poor place for seeing or 
hearing, Bessie felt the satisfaction of being in the right 
company. She had discovered in one of the serried rows of 
the first balcony Kitty Sanders, whom she had known as 
a girl in Kansas City, where Bessie had once lived in the pere- 
grinations of the Bissell family. Kitty had married a pros- 
perous dentist and enjoyed with him an income nearly 
twice that of Rob Falkner. Kitty, scanning the boxes 
closely, also spied Bessie, and exclaimed to her husband: — 

‘““Why, there’s Bessie Bissell in that box! You know she 
married a young fellow, an engineer or something.’’? And 
she added either aloud or to herself, ‘‘They seem to be in zt, — 
that’s the Leason box.” While the alluring strains of the 
overture floated across the house, she mused at the strange 
mutations of fortune, which had landed Bessie Bissell there 
and herself here beside the dentist, — with some envy, in 
spite of three beloved children at home and a motor- 
eo aa ! 

To the dispassionate male observer this state of mind 
might be more comprehensible if Bessie had appeared in 
Mrs. Corporation’s box on a gala night at the Metropolitan, 
or in the Duchess of Thatshire’s box at Covent Garden. 
But the strange fact of democracy is that instead of dis- 
couraging social desires it has multiplied them ten thousand 

189 


190 TOGETHER 


fold. Every city in the land has its own Mrs. Anstruthers 
Leason or Mrs. Corporation, to form the local constellation, 
towards which the active-minded women of a certain type 
will always strive or gravitate, as you choose to put it. This 
being so, the American husband, one might suppose, would 
sigh for an absolute monarchy, where there is but one fixed 
social firmament, admission to which is determined by a 
despot’s edict. Then the great middle class could rest 
content, knowing that forever, no matter what their gifts 
might be, their wives could not aspire to social heights. 
With us the field is clear, the race open to money and brains, 
and the result? Each one can answer for himself. 
Isabelle, returning to her home that fall, with a slight 
surplus of vitality, was eager for life. “I have been dead 
so long,’ she said to her husband. “I want to see people!” 
Born inside the local constellation, as she had been, that was 
not difficult. Yet she realized soon enough that the Prices, 
prominent as they were, had never belonged to the heart of 
the constellation. It remained for her to penetrate there, 
under the guidance of the same Nannie Lawton whom as a 
girl she had rather despised. For every constellation has its 
inner circle, the members of which touch telepathically all 
other inner circles. The fact that Nannie Lawton called her 
by her first name would help her socially more than the 
Colonel’s record as a citizen or her husband’s position in the 
railroad or their ample means. Before her second winter of 
married life had elapsed, she had begun to exhaust this form of 
excitement, to find herself always tired. After all, although 
the smudge of St. Louis on the level alluvial plains of America 
was a number of times larger than the smudge of Torso, the 
human formula, at least in its ornamental form, remained 
much the same. She was patroness where she should be 
patroness, she was invited where she would have felt neg- 
lected not to be invited, she entertained very much as the 
others she knew entertained, and she and her husband had 
more engagements than they could keep. She saw this 
existence stretching down the years with monotonous 


TOGETHER 191 


iteration, and began to ask herself what else there was to 
satisfy the thirst for experience which had never been 
assuaged. 

Bessie, with a keener social sense, kept her eye on the game, 
—she had to, and her little triumphs satisfied her. Nan 
Lawton varied the monotony of ‘‘the ordinary round”’ by 
emotional dissipations that Isabelle felt herself to be above. 
Other women of their set got variety by running about the 
country to New York or Washington, to a hotel in Florida or 
in the mountains of Carolina, or as a perpetual resource to 
Paris and Aix and Trouville and London... . 

Isabelle was too intelligent, too much the daughter of her 
father, to believe that a part of the world did not exist out- 
side the social constellation, and an interesting part, too. 
Some of those outside she touched as time went on. She was 
one of the board of governors for the Society of Country 
Homesfor Girls, and hereand onthe Orphanage board she met 
energetic and well-bred young married women, who appar- 
ently genuinely preferred their charities, their reading clubs, 
the little country places where they spent the summers, 
to the glory of Mrs. Anstruthers Leason’s opera box or 
dinner dance. As she shot about the city on her errands, 
social and philanthropic, Isabelle sometimes mused on the 
lives of the ‘‘ others,’’ — all those thousands that filled the 
streets and great buildings of the city. Of course the poor,— 
that was simple enough; the struggle for life settled how 
one would live with ruthless severity. If it was a daily 
question how you could keep yourself housed and fed, why it 
did not matter what you did with your life. In the ranks 
above the poor, the little people who lived in steam-heated 
apartments and in small suburban boxes had their small 
fixed round of church and friends, still closely circumscribed 
and to Isabelle, in her present mood, —simply dreadful. 
When she expressed this to Fosdick, whom she was taking 
one morning to a gallery to see the work of a local artist 
that fashionable people were patronizing, he had scoffed at 
her: — 


4 


- 192 | TOGETHER 


“Madame la princesse,” he said, waving his hand towards 
the throng of morning shoppers, “don’t you suppose that the 
same capacity for human sensation exists in every unit of 
that crowd bent towards Sneeson’s as in you?”’ 

INO; protested Isabelle, promptly; ‘‘they haven’t the 
same experience.’ 

“As thrilling a drama can be unrolled in a bo batetane 
dollar flat as in a palace.” 

“Stuff! There isn’t one of those women who wouldn't 
be keen to try the palace!” 

“As you ought to be to try the flat, in a normally consti- 
tuted society.” 

“What do you mean by a normally constituted society ?” 

“One where the goal of ease is not merely entertainment.” 

“You are preaching now, aren’t you?” demanded Isa- 
belle. ‘Society has always been pretty much the same, 
hasn’t it? First necessities, then comforts, then luxuries, 
and then —’”’ 

“Well, what?” 

‘“‘Oh, experience, art, culture, I suppose.’’ | 

“‘Tsabelle,”’ the big man smilingly commented, “you are 
the same woman you were six years ago.” 

“T am not!’ she protested, really irritated. “I have 
done a lot of thinking, and I have seen a good deal of life. 
Besides I am a good wife, and a mother, which I wasn’t six 
years ago, and a member of the Country Homes Society and 
the Orphanage, and a lot more.’”’? They laughed at her 
defence, and Isabelle added as a concession: ‘‘I know that 
there are plenty of women not in society who lead interesting 
lives, are intelligent and all that. But I am a good wife, 
and a good mother, and I am intelligent, and what is more, 
I see amusing people and more of them than the others, — 
the just plain women. What would you have me do?” 

“Live,” Fosdick replied enigmatically. 

“We all live.” 

“Very few do.” 

“You mean emotional — heart experiences, like Nan’s 


TOGETHER 193 


affairs? ... Sometimes I wonder if that wouldn’t be — | 


interesting. But it would give John such a shock!... 
Well, here are the pictures. There’s Mrs. Leason’s portrait, 
— flatters her, don’t you think?” 

Fosdick, leaning his fat hands on his heavy stick, slowly 
made the round of the canvasses, concluding with the 
portrait of Mrs. Leason. 

“Got some talent in him,” he pronounced; ‘“‘a penny 
worth. If he can only keep away from this sort of thing,” 
pointing with his stick to the portrait,‘‘ he might paint in 
twenty years.” 

“But why shouldn’t he do portraits? They all have to, 
to live.” ; 

“Tt isn’t the portrait, —it’s the sort of thing it brings 
with it. You met him, I suppose?” 

“Yes; dined with him at Mrs. Leason’s last week.” 

“T thought so. That’s the beginning of his end.” 

“You silly! Art has always been parasitic, — why 
shouldn’t the young man go to pleasant people’s houses 
and have a good time and be agreeable and get them to buy 
his pictures ?”’ 

“Tsabelle, you have fallen into the bad habit of echoing 
phrases. ‘Art has always been parasitic.’ That’s the second 
commonplace of the drawing-room you have got off this 
morning.”’ 

“Come over here and tell me something. ... I can’t 
quarrel with you, Dickie!’ Isabelle said, leading the way to 
a secluded bench. 

“Tf I were not modest, I should say you were flirting with 
me.”’ 

“T never flirt with any man; I am known as the Saint, the 
Puritan, —I might try it, but I couldn’t —with you.... 
Tell me about Vick. Have you seen him?” 

“Yes,’”’ Fosdick replied gravely. “I ran across him in 
Venice.”’ 

“How was he?”’ 

“He looked well, has grown rather stout. ... The first 


ce) 


194 TOGETHER 


time I saw him was on the Grand Canal; met him in a smart 
gondola, with men all togged out, no end of a get-up!” 

“You saw them both?” 

“Of course, —I looked him up at once. They have an 
old place on the Giudecca, you know. I spent a week with 
them. He’s still working on the opera, —it doesn’t get on 
very fast, I gather. He played me some of the music, —it’s 
great, parts of it. And he has written other things.” 

“T know all that,’’ Isabelle interrupted impatiently. 
“But is he happy?” 

‘“A man like Vickers doesn’t tell you that, you know.” 

‘But you can tell — how did they seem?” 

“Well,” Fosdick replied slowly, ‘‘ when I saw them in the 
gondola the first time, I thought —it was too bad!” 

‘“‘T was afraid so,”’ Isabelle cried. ‘‘ Why don’t they marry 
and come to New York or go to London or some place and 
make a life? — people can’t live like that.” 

“T think he wants to marry her,” Fosdick replied. 

‘“‘But she won’t?”’ 

‘“‘Precisely, — not now.” 

“Why — what?” 

Fosdick avoided the answer, and observed, “‘ Vick seems 
awfully fond of the little girl, Delia.” 

“Poor, poor Vick!” Isabelle sighed. ‘‘He ought to leave 
that creature.” 

“He won’t; Vick was the kind that the world sells 
cheap, —it’s best kind. He lives the dream and believes 
his shadows; it was always so. It will be so until the end. 
Life will stab him at every corner.” 

“Dear, dear Vick!’’ Isabelle said softly; “some days I feel 
as if I would have done as he did.” 

‘But fortunately there is John to puncture your dream 
with solid fact.” 

“John even might not be able to do hak . Iam going 
over to see Vick this summer.’ 

‘“Wouldn’t that make complications —family ones?” 

Isabelle threw up her head wilfully. 


TOGETHER 195 


“‘Dickie, I think there is something in me deeper than my 
love for John or for the child, — and that is the feeling I 
have about Vick!”’ 

Fosdick looked at her penetratingly. 

“You ought not to have married, Isabelle.” 

“Why? Every one marries — and John and I are very 
happy. ... Come; there are some people I don’t want 
to meet.’ 

As they descended the steps into the murky light of the 
noisy city, Isabelle remarked : — 

“Don’t forget to-night, promptly at seven, — we are going 
to the theatre afterwards. I shall show you some of our 
smart people and let you see if they aren’t more interesting 
than the mob.” 

She nodded gayly and drove off. As she went to a 
luncheon engagement, she thought of Vickers, of Fosdick’s 
remarks about living, and a great wave of dissatisfaction 
swept over her. “It’s this ugly city,’ she said to herself, 
letting down the window. “Or it’s nerves again, — I must 
do something!’’ That phrase was often on her lips these 
days. In her restlessness nothing seemed just right, — 
she was ever trying to find something beyond the horizon. 
As Fosdick would have said, ‘‘The race vitality being ex- 
hausted in its primitive force, nothing has come to take 
its place.””’ But at luncheon she was gay and talkative, 
the excitement of human contact stimulating her. And 
afterwards she packed the afternoon with trivial engage- 
ments until it was time to dress for her guests. 

The dinner and the theatre might have passed off 
uneventfully, if it had not been for Fosdick. That un- 
wieldy social vessel broke early in the dinner. Isabelle had 
placed him next Mrs. Leason because the lady liked celebri- 
ties, and Fosdick, having lately been put gently but firmly 
beyond the confines of the Tzar’s realm for undue intimacy 
with the rebellious majority of the Tzar’s subjects, might be 
counted such. For the time being he had come to a momen- 
tary equilibrium in the city of his birth. Fosdick and Mrs. 


196 TOGETHER 


Leason seemed to find common ground, while the other men, 
the usual speechless contingent of tired business men, allowed 
themselves to be talked at by the women. Presently 
Fosdick’s voice boomed forth : — 

‘Let me tell you a story which will illustrate my point, 
Mrs. Leason. Some years ago I was riding through the 
Kentucky mountains, and after a wretched luncheon in one 
of the log-and-mud huts I was sitting on the bench in front 
of the cabin trying to make peace with my digestion. The 
ground in that spot sloped down towards me, and on the 
side of this little hill there lay a large hog, a razor-back sow. 
There were eight little pigs clustered in voracious attitudes 
about her, and she could supply but six at a time, — I mean 
that she was provided by nature with but six teats.’ 

Mrs. Leason visibly moved away from her neighbor, and 
for the rest of his story Fosdick had a silent dinner table. 

“The mother was asleep,’”’ Fosdick continued, turning his 
great head closer to Mrs. Leason, “ probably attending to her 
digestion as I was to mine, and she left her offspring to fight it 
out among themselves for the possession of her teats. There 
was a lively scrap, a lot of hollerin’ and squealin’ from that 
bunch of porkers, grunts from the ins and yaps from the 
outs, you know. Every now and then one of the outs would 
make a flying start, get a wedge in and take a nip, forcing 
some one of his brothers out of the heap so that he would roll 
down the hill into the path. Up he’d get and start over, 
and maybe he would dislodge some other porker. And the 
old sow kept grunting and sleeping peacefully in the sun 
while her children got their dinner in the usual free-fight 
fashion. 

“Now,” Fosdick raised his heavy, square-pointed finger 
and shook it at the horrified Mrs. Leason and also across the 
table, noticing what seemed to him serious interest in his 
allegory, ‘‘ I observed that there was a difference among those 
little porkers, — some were fat and some were peaked, and 
the peaked fellers got little show at the mother. Now what 
I ask myself is, — were they weak because they couldn’t 


TOGETHER 197 


manage to get a square feed, or were they hustled out more 
than the others because they were naturally weak? I leave 
that to my friends the sociologists to determine —”’ 

“Tsabelle,’’? Lane interposed from his end of the table, ‘if 
Mr. Fosdick has finished his pig story, perhaps —”’ 

Isabelle, divided between a desire to laugh and a very vivid 
sense of Mrs. Leason’s feelings, rose, but Fosdick had not 
finished and she sat down again. 

“But what I meant to say was this, madam, — there’s 
only one difference between that old sow and her brood and 
society as it is run at present, and that is there are a thou- 
sand mouths to every teat, and a few big, fat fellows are 
getting all the food.” 

He looked up triumphantly from his exposition. There 
was a titter at Mrs. Lawton’s end of the table. This lady 
had been listening to an indecent story told in French- 
English when Fosdick had upset things. Now she remarked 
in an audible tone: — 

“ Disgusting, I say!” 

“Eh! What’s the matter? Don’t you believe what I 
told you?’ Fosdick demanded. 

“Oh, yes, Dickie, — anything you say,— only don’t 
repeat it!’’ Isabelle exclaimed, rising from the table. 

“Does he come from a farm?’’ one woman murmured 
indignantly. ‘“‘Such gros mots!’’ She too had been listen- 
ing to the story of adultery at Mrs. Lawton’s end of the 
table. Isabelle, who had taken in the whole situation from 
her husband’s shocked face, Nan Lawton’s sly giggle over 
the salacious tidbit, and Mrs. Leason’s offended counte- 
nance, felt that she must shriek to relieve her feelings. 

The party finally reached the theatre and saw a “sex’’ 
play, which caused a furious discussion among the women. 
“No woman would have done that.” “The man was not 
worth the sacrifice,” ete. And Fosdick gloomily remarked 
in Isabelle’s ears: “‘Rot like this is all you see on the 
modern stage. And it’s because women want it, — they 
must forever be fooling with sex. Why don’t they —’’ 


198 TOGETHER 


“Hush, Dickie! you have exploded enough to-night. 
Don’t say that to Mrs. Leason!”’ 

Her world appeared to her that night a harlequin tangle, 
and, above all, meaningless — yes, dispiritedly without 
sense. John, somehow, seemed displeased with her, as if 
she were responsible for Dickie’s breaks. She laughed 
again as she thought of the sow story, and the way the 
women took it. “What a silly world, — talk and flutter 
and gadding, all about nothing!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


ISABELLE did not see much of the Falkners as time went on. 
Little lines of social divergence began to separate them more 
and more widely. ‘‘ After all, one sees chiefly the people 
who do the same things one does,” Isabelle explained to 
herself. Bessie thought Isabelle ‘ uncertain,’ perhaps snob- 
bish, and felt hurt; though she remarked to Rob merely, 
““The Lanes are very successful, of course.” 

Affairs in the Buena Vista Pleasance house had progressed 
meantime. There were, naturally, so many meals to be 
got and eaten, so many little illnesses of the children, and 
other roughnesses of the road of life. There was also Bessie’s 
developing social talent, and above all there was the in- 
finitely complex action and reaction of the man and the 
wife upon each other. Seen as an all-seeing eye might 
observe, with all the emotional shading, the perspective of 
each act, the most commonplace household created by man 
and woman would be a wonderful cosmography. But the 
novelist, even he who has the courage to write a dull book, 
can touch but here and there, on the little promontories of 
daily life, where it seems to him the spiritual lava boils up 
near the surface and betrays most poignantly the nature cf 
the fire beneath. .. . 

It was a little over three years since the Falkners had 
moved into the Buena Vista Pleasance house. Husband 
and wife sat in the front room after their silent dinner alone, 
with the September breeze playing through the windows, 
which after a hot day had been thrown open. ‘There was 
the débris of a children’s party in the room and the hall, 
—dolls and toys, half-nibbled cakes and saucers of ice- 
cream. Bessie, who was very neat about herself, was quite 


199 


200 TOGETHER 


Southern in her disregard for order. She was also an ador- 
able hostess for children, because she gave them loose rein. 

“What is it you wish to say ?’’ she asked her husband in 
a cold, defensive tone that had grown almost habitual. 

Though pale she was looking very pretty in a new dress 
that she had worn at a woman’s luncheon, where she had 
spent the first part of the afternoon. She had been much ad- 
mired at the luncheon, had taken the lead in the talk about 
a new novel which was making a ten days’ sensation. Her 
mind was still occupied partly with what she had said about 
the book. Thesediscussions with Rob on household matters, at 
increasingly frequent periods, always froze her. “ He makes 
me show wy worst side,’’ she said to herself. At the chil- 
dren’s tea, moreover, an attack of indigestion had developed. 
Bessie was fond of rich food, and in her nervous condition, 
which was almost chronic, it did not agree with her, and 
made her irritable. 

“T have been going over our affairs,’ Falkner began in 
measured tones. That was the usual formula! Bessie 
thought he understood women very badly. She wondered 
if he ever did anything else those evenings he spent at home 
except “go over their affairs.’”” She wished he would devote 
himself to some more profitable occupation. 

“Well?” 

Falkner looked tired and listless. The summer was always 
his hardest time, and this summer the road had been pushing 
its terminal work with actual ferocity. He wore glasses 
now, and was perceptibly bald. He was also slouchy about 
dress; Bessie could rarely induce him to put on evening. 
clothes when they dined alone. 

“Well?” she asked again. It was not polite of him to 
sit staring there as if his mind were a thousand miles away. 
A husband should show some good manners to a woman, 
even if she was his wife! 

Their chairs were not far apart, but the tones of their 
voices indicated an immeasurable gulf that had been deepen- 
ing for years. Falkner cleared his voice. | 


TOGETHER 201 


“As I have told you so often, Bessie, we are running be- 
hind all the time. It has got to a point where it must stop.” 

“What do you suggest?” 

““You say that three servants are necessary ?”’ 

“You can see for yourself that they are busy all the time. 
There’s work for four persons in this house, and there ought 
to be a governess beside. I don’t at all like the influence 
of that school on Mildred —” 

“Ought!” he exclaimed. 

“Tf people live in a certain kind of house, in a certain 
neighborhood, they must live up to it, —that is all. If 
you wish to live as the Johnstons live, why that is another 
matter altogether.” 

Her logic was imperturbable. There was an unexpressed 
axiom: “If you want a dowd for your wife who can’t 
dress or talk and- whom nobody cares to know, — why 
you should have married some one else.’”’ Bessie awaited 
his reply in unassailable attractiveness. 

“Very well,” Falkner said slowly. “That ‘being so, I 
have made up my mind what to do.” 

Mildred entered the room at this moment, looking for a 
book. She was eight, and one swift glance at her parents’ 
faces was enough to show her quick intelligence that they 
were “discussing.” 

“What is it, Mildred?” Bessie asked in the cooing voice 
she always had for children. 

“T want my Jungle Book,” the little girl replied, taking 
a book from the table. 

“Run along, girlie,” Bessie said; and Mildred, having 
decided that it was not an opportune moment to make 
affectionate good- nights, went upstairs. 

“Well, what is it?’’ Bessie demanded in the other tone. 

fhe have a purchaser for the house, at fair terms.” 

“Please remember that it is my house.” 

“Wait! Whatever remains after paying off the mort- 
gage and our debts, not more than six thousand dollars, T 
suppose, will be placed to your credit in the trust company.” 


202 TOGETHER 


“Why should I pay all our debts?” 

Her husband looked at her, and she continued hastily : — 

“What do you mean to do then? We can’t live on the 
street.” 

“We can hire a smaller house somewhere else, or live in a 
flat.” 

Bessie waved her hand in despair; they had been over 
this so many times and she had proved so conclusively the 
impossibility of their squeezing into a flat. Men never 
stay convinced! 

“Or board.” 

“Never !’’ she said firmly. 

“You will have to choose.” 

This was the leading topic of their discussion, and enough 
has been said to reveal the lines along which it developed. 
There was much of a discursive nature, naturally, intro- 
duced by Bessie, who sought thereby to fog the issue and 
effect a compromise. She had found that was a good way 
to deal with a husband. But to-night Falkner kept steadily 
at his object. . 

“No, no, no!” he iterated in weary cadence. “It’s no 
use to keep on expecting; five thousand is all they will 
pay me, and it is all I am really worth to them. And after 
this terminal work is finished, they may have nothing to 
offerme. ... We must make a clean sweep to start afresh, 
right, on the proper basis.”’ After a moment, he added by 
way of appeal, “And I think that will be the best for us, 
also.” 

“You expect me to do all the work?” 

“Expect !’? Falkner leaned his head wearily against the 
chair-back. Words seemed useless at this point. Bessie 
continued rather pitilessly :— 

“Don’t you want a home? Don’t you want your children 
brought up decently with friends about them?” 

“God knows I want a home!” the husband murmured. 

“T think I have made a very good one, — other people 
think gso.”’ 


TOGETHER 203 


“That’s the trouble — too good for me!” 

“J should think it would be an incentive for a man —”’ 

“God!” Falkner thundered; ‘that vou should say that!” 

It had been in her heart a long time, but she had never 
dared to express it before, — the feeling that other men, no 
abler than Rob, contrived to give their wives, no more 
seductive than she, so much more than she had had. 

“Other men find the means — ”’ 

She was thinking of John Lane, of Purrington, —a lively 
young broker of their acquaintance, —of Dr. Larned, — all 
men whose earning power had leaped ahead of Falkner’s. 
Bessie resented the economic dependence of married women 
on their husbands. She believed in the foreign dot system. 
“My daughters shall never marry as I did,’ she would say 
frankly to her friends. “There can be no perfectly happy 
marriage unless the woman is independent of her husband 
in money matters to a certain extent.” ... For she felt 
that she had a right to her ideals, so long as they were not 
bad, vicious; a right to her own life as distinct from her 
husband’s life, or the family life. “The old idea of the 
woman’s complete subordination has gone,’’ she would say. 
“Tt is bettér for the men, too, that women are no longer 
mere possessions without wills of their own.’ It was such 
ideas as this that earned for Bessie among her acquaintances 
the reputation of being “ intelligent’? and ‘ modern.” 

And Falkner, a vision of the mountains and the lonely 
cabin before his eyes, remarked with ironic calm: — 

“And why should I earn more than I do, assuming that. 
I could sell myself at a higher figure ?”’ 

For the man, too, had his dumb idea, — the feeling that 
something precious inside him was being murdered by this 
pressing struggle to earn more, always more. As man he 
did not accept the simple theory that men were better off 
the harder they were pushed, that the male brute needed 
the spur of necessity to function, that all the {nan was good 
for was to be the competent forager. No! Within him 
there was a protest to the whole spirit of his times, — to the 


204 TOGETHER 


fierce competitive struggle. Something inside him pro- 
claimed that he was not a mere maker of dollars, that life 
was more than food and lodging, even for those he loved 
most. 

“What do I get out of it?” he added bitterly. ‘“ Perhaps 
I have done too much.” 

“Oh, if that is the way you feel, — if you don’t love me!” 
Bessie exclaimed with wounded pride. “Probably you 
are tired of me. When aman is sick of his wife, he finds his 
family a burden, naturally.” 

And there they paused at the brink of domestic vulgarity. 

Falkner saw the girl on the veranda of the mountain 
hotel, with her golden hair, her fresh complexion, her allure- 
ment. Bessie, most men would think, was even more 
desirable this minute than then as an unformed girl. The 
arched eyebrows, so clearly marked, the full lips, the dimpled 
neck, all spake: — 

“Come kiss me, and stop talking like that!” 

For a moment the old lure seized the man, the call of the 
woman who had once been sweet to him. Then his blood 
turned cold within him. That was the last shame of mar- 
riage, — that a wife should throw this lure into ‘the reason- 
ing, a husband to console himself — that way! Falkner rose 
to his feet. 

‘“T shall make arrangements to sell the house.” 

“Very well; then I shall take the children and go to my 
mother in Denver.” 

“As you please.” 

Without looking again at his wife, he left the room. 

Bessie had played blindly her last card, the wife’s last 
card, and lost! There was bitterness and rebellion in her 
heart. She had loved her husband, — hadn’t she shown 
it by marrying him instead of the mine owner? She had 
been a good woman, not because she hadn’t had her chances 
of other men’s*admiration, as she sometimes let her husband 
know. Dickie Lawton had made love to her outrageously, 
and the last time the old Senator had been in St. Louis, — 


TOGETHER | 205 


well, he would never come again to her house. Not a 
shadow of disloyalty had ever crossed her heart. 

Bessie thought that a good wife must be chaste, of course; 
other matters of wifely duty were less distinct. 

No! her husband did not care for her any more, — that 
was the real cause of their troubles. It was hard to wake 
up to such a fact after nine years of marriage with a man 
whom you loved! 

There was a tragedy between, but not the one that Bessie 
suspected, nor the mere tragedy of extravagance. Each 
realized dimly that the other hindered rather than promoted 
that something within which each held tenaciously as most 
precious. Instead of giving mutually, they stole mutually, 
and the end of that sort of life must be concubinage or 
the divorce court —or a spiritual readjustment beyond 
the horizon of either Falkner or his wife. 


“Did you know that the Falkners were going to give up 
their house?” Lane asked his wife. 

“No, indeed. I saw Bessie at the symphony the other 
day, and she spoke of going out to Denver to visit her mother; 
but she didn’t say anything about the house. Are you 
sure ?”’ 

“Yes; Falkner told Bainbridge he was selling it. And 
he wanted Bainbridge to see if there was an opening for 
him on the road in the East. I am afraid things haven’t 
gone well with them.” 

“After all the trouble they had building, and such a 
pretty house! What a shame!” 

Lane was in his outing clothes, about to go to the country 
club for an afternoon of golf with the Colonel. He looked 
very strong and handsaqme in his Scotch tweeds. Lately 
he had begun to take more exercise than he had found time 
for the first years of his marriage, had developed a taste 
for sport, and often found a day or two to fish or hunt when 
friends turned up from the East. Isabelle encouraged this 
taste, though she saw all the less of her husband; she had 


206 TOGETHER 


a feeling that it was good for him to relax, made him more 
of the gentleman, less of the hard-working clerk. The 
motor was at the door, but he dawdied. 

“Tt is a pity about the Falkners, — 1 am afraid they are 
not getting on well together. He’s a peculiar fellow. Bain- 
bridge tells me his work is only pretty good, — doesn’t put 
his back into it the way a man must who means to get up 
in his profession these days. There is a lot doing in his 
line, too. It will be a shame if trouble comes to Bessie.” 
* “The old difficulty, I suppose,” Isabelle remarked; “not 
enough money — same story everywhere !”’ 

It was the same story everywhere, even in these piping 
times of prosperity, with fortunes doubling, salaries going 
up, and the country pouring out its wealth. So few of 
her friends, even the wealthy ones, seemed to have enough 
money for their necessities or desires. If they had four’ 
servants, they needed six; if they had one motor, they must 
have two; and the new idea of country houses had simply — 
doubled or trebled domestic budgets. It wasn’t merely 
in the homes of ambitious middle-class folk that the cry . 
went up, — “‘We must have more!” Isabelle herself had 
begun to feel that the Colonel might very well have given 
her a package of stocks and bonds at her wedding. Even 
with her skilful management, and John’s excellent salary, 
there was so much they could not do that seemed highly 
desirable to do. “Everything costs so these days!’? And 
to live meant to spend, — to live! 


CHAPTER XXIV 


ISABELLE did not go to Vickers as she firmly intended to 
that summer. Lane offered a stubborn if silent opposition 
to the idea of her joining her brother, — ‘‘so long as that 
woman is with him.’’ He could not understand Isabelle’s 
passionate longing for her brother, nor the fact that his 
loyalty to his mistake endeared Vickers all the more to 
her. She divined the ashes in her brother’s heart, the 
waste in which he dwelt, and the fact that he “had made a 
complete mess of life’? did not subtract from her love. 
After all, did the others, their respectable acquaintance, often 
make much of living? 

It was not John’s opposition, however, that prevented 
the journey, but the alarming weakness of the Colonel. In 
spite of his activity and his exercise the old man had been 
growing perceptibly weaker, and his digestive trouble had 
developed until the doctors hinted at cancer. To leave 
the Colonel now and go to the son he had put out of his life 
would be mere brutality. Vickers might come back, but 
Mrs. Price felt that this would cause the Colonel more pain 
than pleasure. 

During the spring Isabelle made many expeditions about 
the city in company with her father, who gave as an excuse 
for penetrating all sorts of new neighborhoods that he 
wished to look at his real estate, which was widely scattered. 
But this was merely an excuse, as Isabelle easily perceived ; 
what he really cared about was to see the city itself, the 
building, the evidences of growth, of thriving. 

“When your mother and I came to live in the city,” he 
would say, laying a large white hand on his daughter’s knee, 
“it was all swamp out this way,— we used to bring Ezra 

207 


208 TOGETHER 


with us in the early spring and pick pussy-willows. Now 
look at it!’ And what Isabelle saw, when she looked in 
the direction that the old man waved his hand, was a row 
of ugly brick apartment houses or little suburban cottages, 
or brick stores and tenements. There was nothing in the 
scene, for her, to inspire enthusiasm, and yet the Colonel 
would smile and gaze fondly out of those kindly blue eyes 
at the acres of human hive. It was not pride in his shrewd 
foresight in investing his money, so much as a generous 
sympathy for the growth of the city, the forthputting of a 
strong organism. 

“JT bought this tract in eighty-two,” he said, pointing to 
a stretch of factories and grain elevators. “Had to borrow 
part of the money to do it. Parrott thought I was a fool, 
but I knew the time would come when it would be sold by 
the foot,—folks are born and must work and live,” he 
mused. He made the man drive the car slowly through 
the rutty street while he looked keenly at the hands pouring 
from the mills, the elevators, the railroad yards, ‘Too 
many of those Polaks,” he commented, ‘‘ but they are better 
than niggers. It is a great country!”’ 

In the old man’s pride there was more than selfish satis- 
faction, more than flamboyant patriotism over his “big”’ 
country; there was an almost pathetic belief in the goc dness 
of life, merely as life. These breeding millions, in this 
teeming country, were working out their destiny, — on 
the whole a better destiny than the world had yet seen. 
And the old man, who had lived his’life and fought vitally, 
felt deep in the inner recesses of his being that all was good; 
the more chance for the human organism to be born and 
work out its day, the better. In the eyes of the woman 
of the newer generation this was a singular pantheism, — 
incomprehensible. Unless one were born under favorable 
conditions, what good was there in the struggle? Mere 
life was not interesting. 

They went, too, to see the site of the coming Exposition. 
The great trees were being cut down and uprooted to give 


& 


TOGETHER 209 


space for the vast buildings. The Colonel lamented the 
loss of the trees. ‘“‘ Your mother and I used to come out 
here Sundays in summer,” he said regretfully. ‘It was a 
great way from town then — there was only a steam road — 
and those oaks were grateful, after the heat. I used to 
lie on the ground and your mother would read to me. She 
had a very sweet voice, Isabelle !’’ | 

But he believed in the Exposition, even if the old trees 
must be sacrificed for it. He had contributed largely to 
the fund, and had been made a director, though the days 
of his leadership were over. ‘It is good for people to see 
how strong they are,” he said. ‘These fairs are our Olympic 
games !”’ 


At first he did not wish to leave the city, which was part 
of his bone and flesh; but as the summer drew on and he 
was unable to endure the motor his thoughts turned back 
to his Connecticut hills, to the old farm and the woods and 
the fields. Something deeper than all was calling to him 
to return to the land that was first in his blood. So they 
carried him — now a bony simulacrum of his vigorous self — 
to the old house at Grafton. For a few weeks he lay wrapped 
in rugs on the veranda, his eyes on Dog Mountain. At 
first he liked to talk with the farm-hands, who slouched 
past the veranda. But more and more his spirit withdrew 
even from this peaceful scene of his activity, and at last he 
died, as one who has no more concern about life. .. . 

To Isabelle, who had been with him constantly these last 
fading months, there was much that remained for a long 
time inexplicable in her father’s attitude towards life. He 
seemed to regret nothing, not even the death of his elder 
son, nor his estrangement from Vickers, and he had little 
of the old man’s pessimism. ‘There were certain modern 
manifestations that she knew he disliked; but he seemed 
to have a fine tolerance even for them, as being of no special 
concern to him. He had lived his life, such as it was, with- 
out swerving, without doubts or besitations, which beset 

P 





510 TOGETHER 


the younger generation, and now that it was over he had 
neither regret nor desire to grasp more. 

When the Colonel’s will was opened, it caused surprise 
not only in his family, but in the city where he had lived. 
It was long talked about, In the first place his estate was 
much larger than even those nearest him had supposed; 
it mounted upwards from eight millions. The will appar- 
ently had been most carefully considered, largely rewrit- 
ten after the departure of Vickers. His son was not 
mentioned in the document. Nor. were there the large 
bequests, at least outright, to charities that had been ex- 
pected of so public spirited a man. The will was a docu- 
ment in the trust field. To sum it all up, it seemed as if 
the old man had little faith in the immediate generation, 
even in his daughter and her successful husband. For he 
left Isabelle only the farm at Grafton and a few hundred 
thousand dollars. To be sure, after his wife’s death the 
bulk of the estate would be held in trust for her child, or 
children, should her marriage prove more fruitful in the 
future. Failing heirs, he willed that the bulk of the estate 
should go to certain specified charities, —an Old Man’s 
Home, The Home for Crippled Children, ete. And it was 
arranged that the business should be continued under the 
direction of the trustees. The name of Parrott and Price 
should still stand for another generation! 

‘‘A singular will! ’’ Lane, who was one of the trustees, said 
to his wife. 

Isabelle was more hurt than she cared to have known. 
She had always supposed that some day she would be a 
rich woman in her own right. But it was the silent com- 
ment, the mark of disapproval, that she read in the lines 
of the will which hurt. The Colonel had never criticised, 
never chided her; but she had felt at times that he did not 
like the kind of life she had elected to lead latterly. 

“He thought we were extravagant, probably,” she re- 
plied to her husband. 

“T can’t see why, — we never went to him for help!” 


TOGETHER 211 


She knew that was not exactly the reason, — extrava- 
gance. The old man did not like the modern spirit — at 
least the spirit of so many of her friends — of spending for 
themselves. The Colonel did not trust the present genera- 
tion; he preferred that his money should wait until possibly 
the passing of the years had brought wisdom. 

“‘A selfish will!’’ the public said. 





PART THREE 





CHAPTER XXV 


Fospick had called Cornelia Woodyard the ‘ Vampire,’ 
— why, none of her admirers could say. She did not look 
the part this afternoon, standing before the fire in her 
library, negligently holding a cup of tea in one hand, while 
she nibbled gourmandizingly at a frosted cake. She had 
come in from an expedition with Cairy, and had not re- 
moved her hat and gloves, merely letting her furs slip off 
to the floor. While she had her tea, Cairy was looking 
through the diamond. panes of a bank of windows at a strip 
of small park, which was dripping in the fog of a dubious 
December day. Conny, having finished her tea, examined 
lazily some notes, pushed them back into their envelopes 
with a disgusted curl of her long lips, and glancing over her 
shoulder at Cairy drawled in an exhausted voice : — 

“Poke the fire, please, Tommy !”’ 

Cairy did as he was told, then lighted a cigarette and 
stood expectantly. Conny seemed lost in a maze of dreary 
thoughts, and the man looked about the room for 
amusement. It was a pleasant little room, with sufficient 
color of flowers and personal disorderliness of letters and 
books and papers to soften the severity of the Empire 
furniture. Evidently the architect who had done over 
this small down-town house had been supplemented by 
the strong hand of its mistress. Outside and inside he 
had done his best to create something French out of the 
old-fashioned New York block house, but Cornelia Wood- 
yard had Americanized his creation enough to make it 
intimate, livable. 

“Can’t you say something, Tommy?” Conny murmured 
in her childish treble. 

“T have said a good deal first and last, haven’t I?” 

215 


216 TOGETHER 


“Don’t be cross, Tommy! Iam down on my job to-day.” 

“Suppose you quit it! Shall we go to the Bahamas? 
OrxParis too Orenio : 

“Do you think that you could manage the excursion, 
Tommy?” Although she smiled good-naturedly, the re- 
mark seemed. to cut. The young man slumped into a 
chair and leaned his head on his hands. 

“Besides, where would Percy come in?” 

Cairy asked half humorously, ‘‘ And where, may I ask, do 
I come in?” 

“Oh, Tommy, don’t look like that !’? Conny complained. 
“You do come in, you know!” 

Cairy brought his chair and placed himself near the fire; 
then leaned forward, looking intently into the woman’s eyes. 

“T think sometimes the women must be right about you, 
you know.” 

‘‘ What do they say?”’ 

. “That you are a calculating machine, — one of 
those things they have in banks to do arithmetic stunts!” 

“No, you don’t, ... silly! Tell me what Gossom said 
about the place.” 

“He didn’t say much about that; he talked about G. 
Lafayette Gossom and The People’s Magazine chiefly. .. . 
The mess of pottage is three hundred a month. I am to be un- 
derstudy to the great fount of ideas. When he has an inspira- 
tion he will push a bell, and I am to run and catch it as it 
flows red hot from his lips and put it into shape, —if I can.” 

Cairy nursed his injured leg with a disgusted air. 

“Don’t sniff, Tommy, —there are lots of men who 
would like to be in your shoes.” 

“T know. ... Oh, I am not ungrateful for my daily 
bread. I kiss the hand that found it, — the hand of power !”’ 

“Silly! Don’t be literary with me. Perhaps I put the 
idea into old Noddy Gossom’s head when he was here the 
other night. You’ll have to humor him, listen to his pom- 
posity. But he has made a success of that People’s Maga- 
zine. It is an influence, and it pays!” 


TOGETHER 217 


“Four hundred thousand a year, chiefly automobile and 
corset ads, I should say.” 

“Nearly half a million a year!’’ Conny cried with the 
air of ‘See what I have done for you!’ 

“Yes!” the Southerner remarked with scornful emphasis. 
‘ “T shall harness myself once more to the car of tri- 
umphant prosperity, and stretch forth my hungry hands 
to catch the grains that dribble in the rear. Compromise! 
Compromise! All is Compromise !”’ 

“Now you are literary again,’ Conny pronounced se- 
verely. ‘‘ Your play wasn’t a success, — there was no com- 
promise about that! The managers don’t want your new 
play. Gossom does want your little articles. You have to 
live, and you take the best you can get, — pretty good, too.” 

“Madam Materialist !’’ 

Conny made a little. face, and continued in the same lec- 
turing tone.. 

“Had you rather go back to that cross-roads in the Vir- 
ginia mountains — something Court-house— or go to London 
and write slop home to the papers, as Ted Stevens does ?”’ 

““You know why I don’t go back to the something Court- 
house and live on corn-bread and bacon!”’ Cairy sat down 
once more very near the blond woman and leaned forward 
slowly. Conny’s mouth relaxed, and her eyes softened. 

“You are dear,” she said with a little laugh; “but you are 
silly about things.”” As the young man leaned still farther 
forward, his hand touching her arm, Conny’s large brown 
eyes opened speculatively on him... . 

The other night he had kissed her for the first time, that 
is, really kissed her in unequivocal fashion, and she had 
been debating since whether she should mention the matter 
to Perey. The right moment for such a confidence had not 
yet come. She must tell him some day. She prided her- 
self that her relation with her husband had always been 
honest and frank, and this seemed the kind of thing he ought 
to know about, if she were going to keep that relation what 
it had been. She had had tender intimacies — ‘‘ emotional 


> 


218 TOGETHER 


friendships,’’ her phrase was — before this affair with Cairy. 
They had always been perfectly open: she had lunched and 
dined them, so to speak, in public as well as at the domestic 
table. Percy had rather liked her special friends, had been 
nice to them always. 

But looking into the Southerner’s eyes, she felt that there 
was something different in this case; it had troubled her 
from the time he kissed her, it troubled her now — what 
she could read in hiseyes. He would not be content with that 
‘‘emotional friendship” she had given the others. Perhaps, 
and this was the strangest thrill in her consciousness, she 
might not be content to have him satisfied so easily... . 
Little Wrexton Grant had sent her flowers and written 
notes — and kissed her strong fingers, once. Bertie Sollo- 
well had dedicated one of his books to her (the author’s copy 
was somewhere in Percy’s study), and hinted that his life 
missed the guiding hand that she could have afforded him. 
He had since found a guiding hand that seemed satisfactory. 
Dear old Royal Salters had squired her, bought her silver 
in Europe, and Jevons had painted her portrait the year 
he opened his studio in New York, and kissed a very beau- 
tiful white shoulder, — purely by way of compliment to the 
shoulder. All these marks of gallantry had been duly 
reported to Percy, and laughed at together by husband 
and wife in that morning hour when Conny had her coffee 
in bed. Nevertheless, they had touched her vanity, as 
evidences that she was still attractive as a woman. No 
woman — few women at any rate — of thirty-one resents 
the fact that some man other than her husband can feel 
tenderly towards her. And “these friends’? — the special 
ones — had all been respecters of the law; not one would 
have thought of coveting his neighbor’s wife, any more than 
of looting his safe. 

But with Tom Cairy it was different. Not merely because 
he was Southern and hence presumably ardent in tempera- 
ment, nor because of his reputation for being “successful” 
with women; not wholly because he appealed to her on. 


TOGETHER 219 


account of his physical disability, — that unfortunate slip 
by the negro nurse. But because there was in this man 
the strain of feminine understanding, of vibrating senti- 
ment — the lyric chord of temperament — which made him 
lover first and last! That is why he had stirred most women 
he had known well, — women in whom the emotional life 
had been dormant, or unappeased, or petrified. 

“You are such a dear!’’ Conny murmured, looking at him 
with her full soft eyes, realizing in her own way that in this 
fragile body there was the soul of the lover, — born to love, 
to burn in some fashion before some altar, always. | 

The special aroma that Cairy brought to his love-making 
was this sense that for the time it was all there was in life, 
that it shut out past and future. The special woman 
enveloped by his sentiment did not hear the steps of other 
women echoing through outer rooms. She was, for the 
moment, first and last. He was able to create this emo- 
tional delusion genuinely; for into each new love he poured 
himself, like a fiery liquor, that swept the heart clean. 

“ Dearest,’”’ he had murmured that night to Conny, “‘ you 
are wonderful, — woman and man, —the soul of a woman, the 
mind of aman! To love you is to love life.” 

And Conny, in whose ears the style of lover’s sighs was 
immaterial, was stirred with an unaccountable feeling. 
When Cairy put his hand on hers, and his lips quivered 
beneath his mustache, her face inevitably softened and her 
eyes widened like a child’s eyes. For Conny, even Conny, 
with her robust intelligence and strong will to grasp that out 
of life which seemed good to her, wanted to love — in a way 
she had never loved before. Like many women she had 
passed thirty with a husband of her choice, two children, 
and an establishment entirely of her making before she 
became aware that she had missed something on the way, — 
a something that other women had. She had seen Severine 
Wilson go white when a certain man entered the room — 
then light brilliantly with joy when his eyes sought her... . 
That must be worth having, too! ... 


220 TOGETHER 


Her relations with her husband were perfect, — she had 
said so for years and every one said the same thing about 
the Woodyards. They were very intimate friends, close 
comrades. She knew that Percy respected and admired 
her more than any woman in the world, and paid her the 
last flattery of conceding to her will, respecting her intelli- 
gence. But there was something that he had not done, could 
not do, and that was a something that Cairy seemed able to 
do, — give her a sensation partly physical, wholly emotional, 
like the effect of stimulant, touching every nerve. , Conny, 
with her sure grasp of herself, however, had no mind to 
submit blindly to this intoxication; she would examine it, like 
other matters, — was testing it now in her capacious intelli- 
gence, as the man bent his eyes upon her, so close to her 
lips. 

Had she only been the “other sort,’ the conventional 
ordinary sort, she would have either gulped her sensation 
blindly, — ‘‘let herself go,’’ — or trembled with horror and 
run away as from some evil thing. Being as she was, modern, 
intellectual, proudly questioning all maxims, she kept this 
new phenomenon in her hand, saying, ‘‘ What does it mean 
for me?”’ The note of the Intellectuals! 


CHAPTER XXVI 


THERE was the soft sound of a footstep on the padded 
stairs, and Percy Woodyard glanced into the room. 

“Hello, Tom!” he said briskly, and crossed to Conny, whose 
smooth brow he touched softly with the tips of his fingers. 
“How goes it, Tom?” 

“You are home early,’”’? Conny complained in her treble 
drawl. 

“Must go to Albany to-night,” Percy explained, a weary ~ 
note in his voice. ‘‘ Not dining out to-night, Tom?” 

It was a little joke they had, that when Cairy was not with 
them he was ‘“‘dining out.” . . 

When Cairy had left, Conny.1 rose from her lounging posi- 
tion as if to resume tlie burden of life. 

“It’s the Commission ?’’ she inquired. 

“Yes! I sent you the governor’s letter.” 

For a time they discussed the political situation in the 
new Commission, to which Woodyard had recently been 
appointed, his. first conspicuous public position. Then his 
wife observed wearily: ‘‘I was at Potts’s this morning and 
saw Isabelle Lane there. She was in mourning.” 

“Her father died, — you know we saw it in the papers.”’ 

“She must be awfully rich.” 

“He left considerable property, —I don’t know to whom.” 

“Well, they are in New York. Her husband has been 
made something or other in the railroad, so they are going 
to live here.” 

“He is a very able man, I am told.” 

After a time Conny drawled: ‘‘I suppose we must have ’em 
here to dinner, — they are at a hotel up town. Whom shall 
we have?” 

Evidently after due consideration Conny had concluded 

221 


222 TOGETHER 


that the Lanes must come under her cognizance. She ran 
over half a dozen names from her best dinner list, and 
added, ‘‘ And Tom.’’ 

“Why Tom this time?” Perey demanded. 

‘“He’s met Isabelle — and we always have Tommy! You 
aren’t jealous, are you, Percy?” She glanced at him in 
amusement. 

“I must dress,’’ Percy observed negligently, setting down 
his cup of tea. 

“Come here and tell me you are not jealous,’ Conny 
commanded. As her husband smiled and brushed her fair 
hair with his lips, she muttered, “‘ You silly!’’ just as she 
had to Cairy’s unreasonableness. Why! She was Percy’s 
destiny and he knew it. ... She had a contempt for 
people who ruffled themselves over petty emotions. This 
sex matter had been exaggerated by Poets and Prudes, and 
their hysterical utterances should not inhibit her impulses. 

Nevertheless she did not consider it a suitable opportunity 
to tell Percy about the kiss. 


Perey Woodyard and Cornelia Pallanton had married 
on a new, radical basis. They had first met in the house 
of an intellectual woman, the wife of a university professor, 
where clever young persons were drawn in and taught to 
read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Ibsen and George Moore, 
and to engage gracefully in perilous topics. They had been 
rather conscious that they were radicals, — ‘did their own 
thinking,” as they phrased it, these young persons. They 
were not willing to accept the current morality, not even that 
part of it engraved in law; but so far as regarded all of mo- 
rality that lay outside the domain of sex their actions were 
not in conflict with society, though they were Idealists, and 
in most cases Sentimentalists. But in the matter of sex re- 
lation, which is the knot of the tangle for youth, they 
believed in the “development of the individual.” It must 
be determined by him, or her, whether this development 
could be obtained best through regular or irregular relations. 


TOGETHER 223 


The end of all this individual development? ‘The fullest 
activity, the largest experience, the most complete presenta- 
tion of personality,” etc. Or as Fosdick railed, “Suck all 
and spit out what you don’t like!” 

So when these two young souls had felt sufficiently moved, 
one to the other, to contemplate marriage, they had had an 
‘understanding’: they would go through with the cus- 
tomary formula and oaths of marriage, to please their 
relatives and a foolish world; but neither was to be “‘ bound”’ 
by any such piece of silly archaism as the marriage contract. 
Both recognized that both had diversified natures, which 
might require in either case more varied experience than 
the other could give. In their enlightened affection for each 
other, neither would stand in the hght of the other’s best 
good. ... There are many such young people, in whom 
intellectual pride has erased deeper human instincts. But 
as middle life draws on, they conform — or seek refuge 
in the divorce court. 

Neither Percy nor Cornelia had any intention of practising 
adultery as a habit: they merely wished to be honest with 
themselves, and felt superior to the herd in recognizing the 
errant or variant possibilities in themselves. Conny took | 
pleasure in throwing temptation in Percy’s way, in encourag- 
ing him to know other women, — secretly gratified that he 
proved hopelessly domestic. And on her side we have seen 
the innocent lengths to which she had hitherto gone. 

For it proved as life began in earnest for these two that 
much of their ticar vhilosophy crumbled. Instead of the 
vision of feminine Idealism that the young lawyer had wor- 
shipped, Conny developed a neat, practicai nature, immensely 
capable of ‘making things go.” As her husband was the 
most obvious channel through which things could move, her 
husband became her chief care. She had no theory of ex- 
ploiting him, — she had no theories at all. She saw him as 
so much capacity to be utilized. Just as she never was 
entrapped into a useless acquaintance, never had a “‘ wrong 
person’”’ at her house, never wasted her energies on the mere 


224 TOGETHER 


ebullition of good feeling, so she never allowed Percy to 
waste his energies on fruitless works. Everything must 
count. Their life was a pattern of simple and pronounced 
design, from the situation of their house to the footing on 
which it was established and the people who were encouraged 
to attach themselves there. 

Woodyard had been interested in social good works, and 
as a young man had served the Legal Aid Society. A merely 
worldly woman would have discouraged this mild weakness 
for philanthropy. But Conny knew her material; out of 
such as Percy, corporation lawyers — those gross feeders at 
the public trough—were not made. Woodyard was a man 
of fine fibre, rather unaggressive. He must either be steered 
into a shady pool of legal sinecure, or take the more danger- 
ous course through the rapids of public life. It was the mo- 
ment of Reform. Conny realized the capabilities of Reform, 
and Percy’s especial fitness for it; Reform, if not remunera- 
tive, was fashionable and prominent. 

So Conny had steered their little bark, hoisting sail to 
every favorable wind, no matter how slight the puff, until 
Woodyard now was a minor figure in the political world. 
When his name occurred in the newspapers, a good many 
people knew who he was, and his remarks at dinners and his 
occasional speeches were quoted from, if there was not more 
valuable matter. He had been spoken of for Congress. 
(Conny, of course, would never permit him to engulf him- 
self in that hopeless sea.) Just what Conny designed as 
the ultimate end, she herself did not know; like all great 
generals, she was an opportunist and took what seemed to 
her worth taking from the fortunes of the day. The last 
good thing which had floated up on her shore was this 
Commissionership. She had fished that up with the aid of 
the amiable Senator, who had spoken a word here and a 
word there in behalf of young Woodyard. 

Conny was very well pleased with herself as a wife, and 
she knew that her husband was pleased with her. More- 
over, she had not the slightest intention of permitting 


TOGETHER 225 


anything to interfere with her wifely duties as she saw 
them, ¢.. . 

Percy had gone upstairs to that roof story where in New 
York children are housed, to see his boy and girl. He 
was very fond of his children. When he came down, his 
thoughtful face was worried. 

“The kids seem always to have colds,” he remarked. 

“TY know it,’ Conny admitted. “I must take them to 
Dr. Snow to-morrow.”’ (They had their own doctor, and 
also their own throat specialist.) 

“YT wonder if it is good for them here, so far down in 
the city,—they have only that scrap of park to play 
Aaya 

Conny, who had been over this question a good many times, 
answered irrefutably, — 

“There seem to be a good many children growing up all 
right in the same conditions.” 

She knew that Percy would like some excuse to escape into 
the country. Conny had no liking for suburban life, and 
with her husband’s career at the critical point the real 
country was out of the question. 

““T suppose Jack will have to go to boarding school another 
year,’ Percy said with a sigh. 

He was not a strong man himself, though of solid build and 
barely thirty. He had that bloodless whiteness of skin so 
often found among young American men, which contrasted 
with his dark mustache, and after a long day’s work like 
this his step dragged. He wore glasses over his blue eyes, 
and when he removed them the dark circles could be seen. 
Conny knew the limits of his strength and looked carefully 
to his physical exercise. . 

“You didn’t get. your squash this afternoon ?”’ 

When Percy was worried about anything, she immediately 
searched for a physical cause. 

“No! I had to finish up things at the office so that I 
could get away to-night.” 

Then husband and wife went to their dinner, and Wood- 

Q 


226 TOGETHER 


yard gave Conny a short-hand account of his doings, the 
-people he had seen, what they had said, the events at the 
office. Conny required this account each day, either in the 
morning or in the evening. And Woodyard yielded quite 
unconsciously to his wife’s strong will, to her singularly 
definite idea of ‘‘ what is best.’”?’ He admired her deeply, 
was grateful to her for that complete mastery of the detail 
of life which she had shown, aware that if it were not for the 
dominating personality of this woman he had somehow had 
the good fortune to marry, life would have been a smaller 
matter for him. 

“Con,” he said when they had gone back to the library for 
their coffee, ‘I am afraid this Commission is going to be 
ticklish business.” 

“Why?” she demanded alertly. 

“There are some dreadful grafters on it, — I suspect that 
the chairman is a wolf. I suspect further that it has been 
arranged to whitewash certain rank deals.” 

‘But why should the governor have appointed you?” 

“Possibly to hold the whitewash brush.” 

“You think that the Senator knows that?” 

“You can’t tell where the Senator’s tracks lead.” 

“Well, don’t worry! Keep your eyes open. You can 
always resign, you know.” 

Woodyard went off to his train after kissing his wife 
affectionately. Conny called out as he was getting into his 
coat : — 

“Will you be back Sunday? Shall I have the Lanes 
then?” 

“Yes, — and you will go to the Hillyers to-morrow?” 

“T think so, — Tom will take me.”’ 

After the door closed Conny went to her desk and wrote 
the note to Isabelle. Then after meditating a few moments, 
more notes of invitation. She had decided on her combina- 
tion, — Gossom, the Silvers, the Hillyers (to get them off her 
mind), Senator Thomas, and Cairy. She did not take Percy’s 


objection to Tom seriously. 


TOGETHER 227 


She had decided to present a variety of people to the Lanes. 
Isabelle and she had never been intimate, and Conny had 
a woman’s desire to show an accomplished superiority to 
the rich friend, who had been inclined to snub her in board- 
ing school. Conny was eminently skilful in “ combina- 
tions.”’ Every one that composed her circle or even entered 
it might some day be of use in creating what is called 
“publicity.” That, as Cornelia Woodyard felt, was the 
note of the day. ‘‘ You must be talked about by the right 
people, if you want to be heard, if you want your show!” 
she had said to Cairy. Thanks to Lane’s rapid rise in 
the railroad corporation, Isabelle had come legitimately 
within the zone of interest. 

After she had settled this matter to her satisfaction, she 
turned to some house accounts and made various calcula- 
tions. It was a wonder to every one who knew them how 
the Woodyards ‘‘ could do so much on what they had.’”’ As 
a matter of fact, with the rising scale of living, it required 
all Conny’s practical adroitness to make the household 
come out nearly even. Thanks to a great-aunt who ad- 
mired Percy, they had been able to buy this house and alter 
it over, and with good business judgment it had been done 
so that the property was now worth nearly a third more than 
when they took it. But a second man-servant had been 
added, and Conny felt that she must have a motor; she 
pushed away the papers and glanced up, thinking, planning. 

The Senator and she had talked investments the last time 
they had met. She had a little money of her own. If the 
old fox would only take it and roll it up into a big snowball! 
Isabelle, now, with all that wealth! Conny pursed her lips 
in disgust to think that so much of the ammunition of war 
had fallen into such incompetent hands. ‘‘ Yes,” she said 
to herself, ‘the Senator must show me how to do it.’”? Per- 
haps it flitted vaguely through her mind that Percy might 
object to using stock market tips from the Senator. But 
Percy must accept her judgment on this matter. They could 
not go on any longer with only twenty thousand a year. 


228 TOGETHER 


Turning out the lights, she went to her bedroom. It was 
very plain and bare, with none of the little toilette elegances 
or chamber comforts that women usually love. Conny 
never spent except where it showed saliently. Her evening 
gowns were sometimes almost splendid, but her dressing 
gowns were dowdy, and poor little Bessie Falkner spent twice 
as much on lingerie. 

Having discharged the duties of her day, her mind re- 
turned to Cairy, to his work for Gossom, to his appealing self, 
and her lips relaxed in‘a gentle smile. Hers was a simple 
nature, the cue once caught. She had come of rather plain 
people, who knew the worth of a dollar, and had spent 
their lives saving or investing money. The energy of the 
proletariat had been handed to her undiminished. The blood 
was evident in the large bones, the solid figure, and 
tenacious fingers, as well as in the shrewdness with which 
she had created this household. It was her instinct to push 
out into the troubled waters of the material world. She 
never weakened herself by questioning values. She knew — 
what she wanted. 

Nevertheless, as she reached up her hand to turn out the 
night light, she was smiling with dreamy eyes, and her 
thoughts were no longer practical ! 


CHAPTER XXVII 


WHEN Isabelle emerged from the great hotel and turned 
down the avenue to walk to the office of Dr. Potts, as he 
required her to do every day, she had a momentary thrill of 
exultation. Descending the gentle incline, she could see a 
good part of the city extending into a distant blue horizon 
before her. The vast buildings rose like islands in the 
morning mist. It reminded her, this general panorama, of 
the awe-compelling spaces of the Arizona cafion into which 
she had once descended. Here were the same irregular, 
beetling cliffs, the same isolated crags, with sharply out- 
lined lower and minor levels of building. The delicate 
blue, the many grays of storm and mist*gave it color, also. 
But in place of the cafion’s eternal quiet, — the solitude of 
the remote gods, —this city boiled and hummed. That, 
too, — the realization of multitudinous humanity, — made 
Isabelle’s pulses leap. 

In spite of her poor health, she had the satisfaction of at 
last being here, in the big hive, where she had wished to be 
so long. She was a part of it, a painfully insignificant mite 
as yet, but still a part of it. Hitherto New York had been 
a sort of varied hotel, an entertainment. Now it was to be 
her scene, and she had begun already to take possession. 
It had all come about very naturally, shortly after her 
father’s death. While she was dreading the return to St. 
Louis, which must be emptier than ever without the Colonel, 
and she and her mother were discussing the possibility of 
Europe, John’s new position had come. A Western road had 
made him an offer; for he had a splendid record as a “traffic 
getter.”” The Atlantic and Pacific could not lose him; they 
gave him the third vice-presidency with headquarters in 
New York and general charge of traffic. Thus the Lanes’ 

229 


( 


230 TOGETHER 


horizon shifted, and it was decided that the first year in the 
city they should spend in a hotel with Mrs. Price. Isa- 
belle’s health was again miserable; there had been the 
delayed operation; and now she was in the care of the 
famous Potts, trying to recover from the operation, from 
the old fatigue and the recent strains, “to be made fit.” 

The move to New York had not meant much to Lane. 
He had spent a great deal of his time there these last years, 
as well as in Washington, Pittsburg, — in this city and that, 
— as business called him. His was what is usually regarded 
as a cosmopolitan view of life, —it might better be called 
a hotel-view. Home still meant to him the city where his 
wife and child were temporarily housed, but he was equally 
familiar with half a dozen cities. Isabelle, too, had the same 
rootless feeling. She had spent but a short time in any one 
place since she had left her father’s house to go to St. Mary’s. 
That is the privilege or the curse of the prosperous American. 
Life thus becomes a shifting panorama of surfaces. Even 
in the same city there are a dozen spots where the family 
ark has rested, which for the sake of a.better term may 
be called “homes.’”’ That sense of rooted attachment 
which comes from long habituation to one set of physical 
images is practically a lost emotion to Americans... . 

There were days when New York roared too loudly for 
Isabelle’s nerves, when the jammed streets, the buzzing 
shops, the overflowing hotels and theatres, made her long 
for quiet. Then she thought of the Farm as the most stable 
memory of a fixed condition, and she had an unformed plan 
of “doing over”’ the old place, which was now her own, and 
making it the centre of the family’s centrifugal energy. 
Meantime there was the great Potts, who promised her 
health, and the flashing charm of the city. 

Occasionally she felt lonely in this packed procession, this 
hotel existence, with its multitude of strange faces, and 
longed for something familiar, even Torso! At such times 
when she saw the face of an old acquaintance, perhaps in a 
cab at a standstill in the press of the avenue, her heart 


TOGETHER 231 


warmed. Even a fleeting glimpse of something known was 
a relief. Clearly she must settle herself into this whirlpool, 
put out her tentacles, and grasp an anchorage. But 
where? What? 

One morning as she and her mother were making slow 
progress down the avenue, she caught sight of Margaret 
Pole on the sidewalk, waiting to cross the stream, a little 
-boy’s hand in hers. Isabelle waved to her frantically, and 
‘then leaped from the cab, dodged between the pushing 
motors, and grasped Margaret. 

“You here!” she gasped. 

“We came back some months ago,’”’ Margaret explained. 

She was thin, Isabelle thought, and her face seemed much 
older than the years warranted. Margaret, raising her voice 
above the roar, explained that they were living out of town, 
“jn the country, in Westchester,” and promised to come to 
lunch the next time she was in the city. Then with a nod 
and a smile she slipped into the stream again as if anxious 
to be lost, and Isabelle rejoined her mother. | 

“She looks as if she were saving her clothes,’’ Mrs. Price 
announced with her precise view of what she observed. 
Isabelle, while she waited for the doctor, mused on the mo- 
mentary vision of her old friend at the street corner. Mar- 
garet turned up in the noise and mist of the city, as every- 
body might turn up; but Margaret old, worn, and almost 
shabby! Then the nurse came for her and she went into 
the doctor’s room, with a depressing sensation compounded 
of a bad night, the city roar, the vision of Margaret. 

“Well, my lady, what’s the story to-day ?”’ 

Dr. Potts looked up from his desk, and scrutinized the new 
patient out of his shaggy eyebrows. Isabelle began at once 
the neurasthenic’s involved and particularized tale of woe, 
breaking at the end with almost a sob: — 

“T am so useless! I am never going to be well, — what 
is the matter with me?”’ 

“So it’s a bad world this morning, eh?” the doctor quizzed 
in an indulgent voice. ‘ We’ll try to make it better, — shake 


232 TOGETHER : 


up the combination.”’ He broke off suddenly and remarked 
in an ordinary, conversational voice: “ Your friend Mrs. 
Woodyard was in here this morning, — a clever woman! 
My, but she is clever!’ 

“What is the matter with her?” 

“Same thing,— Americanitis; but she’ll pull out if she 
will give herself half a chance.”’ 

Then he returned to Isabelle, wrote her a prescription, 
talked to her for ten minutes, and when she left the office 
she felt better, was sure it would “all come out right.” 

The great Dr. Potts! He served as God to several hun- 
dred neurasthenic women. Born in a back street of a small 
town, he had emerged into the fashionable light after prodi- 
gious labor and exercise of will. Physically he stood six feet, 
with a heavy head covered with thick black hair, and deep- 
set black eyes. He had been well educated professionally, 
but his training, his medical attainments, had little to do 
with his success. He had the power to look through the 
small souls of his women patients, and he found generally 
Fear, and sometimes Hypocrisy, — a desire to evade, to get 
pleasure and escape the bill. These he bullied. Others he 
found struggling, feeble of purpose, desiring light, willingly 
confessing their weakness, and begging for strength. ‘These 
he despised; he gave them drugs and flattered them. There 
were some, like Conny, who were perfectly poised, with a 
plain philosophy of selfishness. These he understood, 
being of fellow clay, and plotted with them how to entrap 
what they desired. 

Power! That was Potts’s keynote, — power, effective- 
ness, accomplishment, at any and all cost. He was the 
spirit of the city, nay of the country itself! “ Results — 
get results at all costs,’ that was the one lesson of life which 
he had learned from the back street, where luckier men 
had shouldered him. ... ‘“I must supply backbone,” he 
would say to his patients. “Iam your temporary dynamo!” 

To Isabelle this mass of energy, Dr. Alexander Potts, | 
seemed like the incarnate will to live of the great city. After 


TOGETHER 233 


her visit at his office she came out into the sharp air, the shrill 
discords of the busy streets, attuned — with purpose, — . 
“T am going to be well now! Iam going to do this. Life 
will arrange itself, and at last I shall be able to live as others 
live.”’ This borrowed purpose might last the day out, and 
she would plunge into a dozen matters; or it might wear 
off in an hour or two. Then back she went the next day 
to be keyed up once more. 

“Do something! Deliver the goods, no matter what goods 
or how you get them into the premises!’’ Potts thundered, 
beating the desk in the energy of his lecture. ‘Live! 
That’s what we must all do. Never mind how you live, — 
‘don’t waste good tissue worrying over that. Live!”’ 

Dr. Potts’ was an education to Isabelle. His moods of 
brutality and of sympathy came like the shifting shadows - 
of a gusty day. His perfectly material philosophy frightened 
her and allured her. He was Mephistopheles, — one hand 
on the medicine chest of life, the other pointing satirically 
‘towards the towered city. 

“See, my child,” he purred; “I will tinker this little toy 
of your body for you; then run along down there and play 
with your brothers and sisters.”’ 

In the mood of reaction that the neurasthenic must 
meet, the trough of the wave, Isabelle doubted. Potts had 
not yet found the key to her mechanism; the old listless 
cloud befogged her still. After a sleepless night she would 
‘sit by her window, high up in the mountain of stone, and 
look out over the city, its voice dull at this hour of dawn, — 
a dozing monster. Something like terror filled her at these 
times, fear of herself, of the slumbering monster, so soon 
‘to wake and roar. “Act, do!” thundered Potts; “don’t 
think! Live and get what you want.” ... Was that all? — 
‘The peaceful pastures at Grafton, the still September after- 
noon when the Colonel died, the old man himself, — there 
was something in them beyond mere energy, quite outside 
the Potts philosophy. 

Once she ventured to suggest this doubt to Cornelia 








234 | TOGETHER 


Woodyard, who, being temporarily in need of a bracer, had ' 
resorted to “old Pot.’ She had planned to go to the opera — 
that night and wanted to “be herself.” 

“J wonder if he’s right about it all,” said Isabelle; “if 
we are just machines, with a need to be oiled now and then, 
— to take this drug or that? Is it all as simple as he makes 
out? All just autointoxication, chemistry, and delusion ?”’ 

“You’re ill, — that’s why you doubt,’’ Conny replied with 
tranquil positiveness. “ When you’ve got the poison out of 
your system, you’ll see, or rather you won’t see crooked, — 
won’t have ideas.”’ 

“Tt’s all a formula?” 

Conny nodded, shutting her large mouth firmly. 

“And he has the key. You are merely an organ, and he 
pulls out this stop or that; gives you one thing to take and 
then another. You tell him this dotty idea you’ve got in 
your head and he’ll pull the right stop to shake it out.” 

“T wonder! Some days I feel that I must go away by 
myself, get out of all the noise, and live up among the moun- 
tains far off —”’ 

She stopped. For Conny was not one to whom to confide 
a longing for the stars and the winds in the pines and the © 
scent of the earth. Such vaporing would be merely another | 
symptom ! | 

‘What would you go mooning off by yourself for? You’d © 
be crazy, for a fact. Better come down to Palm Beach with | 
me next month.” | 

The great Potts had the unfortunate habit of gossiping 
about his patients with one another. He had said to Conny: | 
“Your friend Isabelle interests me. I should say that she | 
had a case of festering conscience.” He crossed his legs | 
and gazed wisely up at the ceiling. “A rudimentary organ 
left over from her hard-working ancestors. She is inhibited, 
tied, thinks she can’t do this and that. What she needs” — 
Potts had found the answer to his riddle and brought his — 
eyes from the ceiling — “is a lover! Can’t you find her | 
one?” 


TOGETHER 235 


“Women usually prefer to select that for themselves.” 

“Oh, no, — one is as good as another. What she needs is 
a counter-irritant. That husband of hers, what is he like?” 

“Just husband, very successful, good-natured, gives her 
what she wants, — I should say they pull well together.”’ 

“That’s it! He’s one of the smooth, get-everything- 
the-dear-woman-wants kind, eh? And then busies himself 
about his old railroad? Well, it. is the worst sort for her. 
She needs a man who will beat her.”’ 

“Ts that what the lover would do?” 

“Bless you, no! He would make her stop thinking she 
had an ache.” When Conny went, the doctor came to the 
door with her and as he held her hand cried breezily: 
“Remember what I said about your friend. Look up some 
nice young man, who will hang around and make her think 
she’s got a soul.”’ He pressed Conny’s hand and smiled. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


WHEN the Lanes went to Sunday luncheon at the Wood- 
yards’, the impression on Isabelle was exactly what Conny 
wished it to be. The little house had a distinct “atmos- 
phere,”’ Conny herself had an “atmosphere,” and the people, 
who seemed much at home there and very gay, were what is 
termed “interesting.”” That is, each person had his ticket 
of “distinction,” as Isabelle quickly found out. One was a 
lawyer whose name often appeared in the newspapers as 
counsel for powerful interests; another was a woman novelist, 
whose last book was then running serially in a magazine and 
causing discussion; a third —a small man with a boyish 
open face — Isabelle discovered with a thrill of delight was 
the Ned Silver whose clever little articles on the current 
drama she had read in a fashionable weekly paper. 

Isabelle found her hostess leaning against the mantelpiece 
with the air of having just come in and discovered her guests. 

“How are you, dearie?’’ she drawled in greeting. “This is 
Mr. Thomas Randall Cairy, Margaret’s cousin, —do you 
remember? He says he has met’ you before, but Thomas 
usually believes he has met ladies whom he wants to know !”’ 
Then Conny turned away, and thereafter paid little atten- 
tion to the Lanes, as though she wished them to understand 
that the luncheon was not given for them. 

“In this case,’ Cairy remarked, “Mrs. Woodyard’s gibe 
happens to miss. I haven’t forgotten the Virginian hills, 
and I hope you haven’t.” 

It was Cairy who explained the people to Isabelle: — 


“There is Gossom, the little moth-eaten, fat man at the 


door. He is the mouthpiece of the People’s, but he doesn’t 
dislike to feast with the clrsses. He is probably telling 
236 


Neen 


TOGETHER 237 


Woodyard at this moment what the President said to him 
last week about Princhard’s articles on the distillery trust !”’ 

Among the Colonel’s friends the magazine reporter Prin- 
chard had been considered an ignorant and malicious liar. 
Isabelle looked eagerly as Cairy pointed him out, — a short, 
bespectacled man with a thin beard, who was talking to 
Silver. 

“There is the only representative of the fashionable world 
present, Mrs. George Bertram, just coming in the door. 
We do not go in for the purely fashionable — yet,” he 
remarked mockingly. ‘‘ Mrs. Bertram is interested in music, 
— she has a history, too.” ... 

By the time the company were ready to lunch, Isabelle’s 
pulse had risen with excitement. She had known, hitherto, 
but two methods of assimilating friends and acquaintances, 
—pure friendship, a good-natured acceptance of those 
likable or endurable people fate threw in one’s way; and 
fashion, —the desire to know people who were generally 
supposed to be the people best worth knowing. But here 
she perceived quickly there was a third principle of selec- 
tion, — “interest.’”’ And as she glanced about the appoint- 
ments of Conny’s smart little house, her admiration for 
her old schoolmate rose. Conny evidently had a definite 
purpose in life, and had the power and intelligence to pursue 
it. To the purposeless person, such es Isabelle had been, 
the evidences of this power were almost mysterious. 

At first the talk at the table went quite over Isabelle’s 
head. It consisted of light gibe and allusion to persons and 
things she had never heard of, —a new actress whom the 
serious Percy was supposed to be in love with, Princhard’s 
adventure with a political notability, a new very “ Ameri- 
can” play. Isabelle glanced apprehensively at her husband, 
who was at Conny’s end of the table. Lane was listening 
appreciatively, now and then exchanging a remark with 
the lawyer across the table. John Lane had that solid ac- 
quaintance with life which made him at home in almost all 
circumstances. If he felt 2s she did, hopelessly countrified, 


238 TOGETHER 


he would never betray it. Presently the conversation got 
to politics, the President, the situation at Albany. Conny, 
with her negligent manner and her childish treble voice, 
gave the talk a poke here and there and steered it skilfully, 
never allowing it to get into serious pools or become mere 
noise. In one of the shifts Cairy asked Isabelle, “ Have 
you seen Margaret since her return ?”’ 

“Yes; tell me why they came back!”’ 

Cairy raised his eyebrows. ‘Too much husband, I should 
say, — shouldn’t you?” ; 

“YT don’t know him. Margaret seemed older, not ‘strong, 
— what is the matter with us all!” 

“You'll understand what is the matter with Margaret 
when you see Larry! And then she has three children, — 
an indecent excess, with her health and that husband.” .. . 

The company broke up after the prolonged luncheon 
almost at once, to Isabelle’s regret; for she wished to see 
more of these people. As they strolled upstairs to the library 
Cairy followed her and said: — 

“Are you going to Mrs. Bertram’s with us? She has 
some music and people Sundays — I’ll tell Mrs. Woodyard,” 
and before she could reply he had slipped over to Conny. 
That lady glanced at Isabelle, smiled on Cairy, and nodded. 
What she said to Cairy was: “So you’ve got a new interest. 
Take care, Tommy, — you’ll complicate your life!’’ But 
apparently she did not regard Isabelle seriously; for pres- 
ently she was saying to her, “Mrs. Bertram wants me to 
bring you around with us this afternoon, — you'll like it.” 

Lane begged off and walked back to the hotel in com- 
pany with the lawyer. After a time which was filled with 
the flutter of amiable little speeches, appointments, and 
good-bys, Isabelle found herself in company with the 
Silvers and Gossom, Cornelia and Cairy on her way to Mrs. 
Bertram’s, which was “just around the corner,’’ — that is, 
half a dozen blocks farther up town on Madison Avenue. 
Mrs. Silver was a pretty, girlish woman with a troubled 
face, who seemed to be making -great efforts to be gay. 


' TOGETHER 239 


She and Cornelia called each other by first names, and when 
Isabelle asked about her later, Conny replied with a pre- 
occupied drawl: — 

“Yes, Annie Silver is a nice little thing, — an awful drag 
on him, you know. They haven’t a dollar, and she is going 
to have a baby; she is in fits about it.” 

As a matter of fact Silver managed to earn by his swiftly 
flowing pen over four thousand dollars a year, without any 
more application than the average clerk. 

“But in New York, you know!” as Conny explained. 
“They have lived in a little apartment, very comfortably, 
and know nice people. Their friends are good to them. 
But if they take to having children!”’ It meant, according 
to Conny’s expressive gesture, suburban life, or something 
“way up town,” “no friends.” Small wonder that Annie 
‘Silver’s face was drawn, and that she was making nervous 
efforts to keep up to the last. Isabelle felt that it must 
be a tragedy, and as Conny said, “Such a clever man, 
too !’ 


Mrs. Bertram’s deep rooms were well filled, and Cairy, 
who still served as her monitor, told Isabelle that most of 
the women were merely fashionable. The men — and there 
was a good sprinkling of them — counted; they all had 
tickets of one sort or another, and he told them off with a 
keen phrase for each. When the music began, Isabelle 
found herself in a recess of the farther room with several 
people whom she did not know. Cairy had disappeared, 
and Isabelle settled back to enjoy the music and study the 
company. In the kaleidoscope of the day, however, an- 
other change was to come, — one that at the time made no 
special impression on her, but one that she was to remember 
years afterward. 

A young man had been singing some songs. When he 
rose from the piano, the people near Isabelle began to 
chatter: — 

“Tsn’t he good looking!. . . That was his own music, — 


ane 


240 TOGETHER 


the Granite City ... Can’t you see the tall buildings, 
hear the wind sweeping from the sea and rushing through the 
streets!’’ etc. Presently there was a piece of music for a 
quartette. At its conclusion a voice said to Isabelle from 
behind her chair: — 

“Pardon me, but do you know what that was?”’ 

She looked over her shoulder expecting to see an acquaint- 
ance. The man who had spoken was leaning forwards, 
resting one elbow on her chair, his hand carelessly plucking 
his gray hair. He had deep piercing black eyes, and an 
odd bony face. In spite of his gray hair and lined face she 
saw that he was not old. 

“Something Russian, I heard some one say,” Isabelle 
replied. 

“T don’t like to sit through music and not know anything 
about it,” the stranger continued with a delicate, deliberate 
enunciation. “I don’t believe that I should be any wiser 
if I heard the name of the piece; but it flatters your vanity, 
I suppose, to knowit. There is Carova standing beside Mrs. 
Bertram; he’s going to sing.” 

“Who is Carova?”’ Isabelle demanded eagerly. 

“The new tenor at the Manhattan, — you haven’t heard 
him?” 

“No,” Isabelle faltered and felt ashamed as she added, 
“You see I am almost a stranger in New York.” 

“Mrs. Bertram knows a lot of these musical chaps.” 

Then the tenor sang, and after the applause had given 
way to another rustle of talk, the gray-haired man con- 
tinued as if there had been no interruption: — 

“So you don’t live in New York? — lucky woman!”’ 

Isabelle moved her chair to look at this person, who wanted 
to talk. She thought him unusual in appearance, and liked 
his friendliness. His face was lined and thin, and the long, 
thin hand on his knee was muscular. Isabelle decided that 
he must be Somebody. 

“T am here for my health, but I expect to live in New 
York,” she explained. 


TOGETHER 241 


“In New York for your health?” he asked in a puzzled 
tone. ‘“ You see, I'am a doctor.” 

“Yes —I came to consult Dr. Potts. I gave out, — am 
always giving out,’”’ Isabelle continued with that confiding 
frankness that always pleased men. “I’m like so many 
women these days, — no good, nerves! If you are a doctor, 
please#éll me why we See all go to pieces in this foolish 
fashion ?”’ 

“Tf I could do that satisfactorily and also tell you how 
not to go to pieces, I should be a very famous man,” he 
replied pleasantly. 

“Perhaps you are!” 

“Perhaps. But I haven’t discovered that secret, yet.” 

“Dr. Potts says it’s all the chemistry inside us — auto- 
intoxication, poison !”’ 

“Yes, that is the latest theory.” 

“Tt seems reasonable; but why didn’t our grandmothers 
get poisoned ?”’ 

“Perhaps they did, — but they didn’t know what to call 
ae 

“You think that is so, — that we are poor little chemical 
retorts? It sounds — horrid.” 

“Tt sounds sensible, but it isn’t the whole of it.” 

“Tell me what you think!” 

“T don’t like to interfere with Dr. Potts,” he suggested. 

“T shouldn’t talk to. you professionally, I know; but 
it is in my mind most of the time. What is the matter? 
What is wrong?” 

“T, too, have thought about it a great deal.’”? He smiled 
and his black eyes had a kindly gleam. 

“Do you believe as Dr. Potts does that it is all what you 
eat, just matter? If your mind is so much troubled, if 
you have these queer ideas, it can’t be altogether the chem- 
istry ?” 

“Tt might be the soul.” 

“Don’t laugh — ” 

“But I really think it might be the soul.” 

R 


242 TOGETHER 


The music burst upon them, and when there was another 
interval, Isabelle persisted with the topic which filled her 
mind. 

“Will you tell me what you mean by the soul?” 

“Can you answer the question? ... Well, since we 
are both in doubt, let us drop the term for a while and get 
back to the body.” 

“Only we must not end with it, as Potts does!” 

“No, we must not end with the body.” 

“First, what causes it, — hysterics, nerves, no-goodness, 
—the whole thing?” 

“Improper food, bad education, steam heat, variable 
climate, inbreeding, lack of children, — shall I stop?” 

“No! I can’t find a reasonable cause yet.”’ 

“T haven’t really begun. ... ‘The brain is a delicate 
instrument. It can doa good deal of work in its own way, if 
you don’t abuse it —”’ 

“Overwork it?’’ suggested Isabelle. 

“T never knew an American woman who overworked her 
brain,” he retorted impatiently. ‘“I mean abuse it. It’s 
grossly abused.”’ 

“Wrong ideas ?”’ 

“No ideas at all, in the proper sense, — it’s stuffed with 
all sorts of things, — sensations, emotions. ... Where 
are you living?” 

“At the Metropole.” 

‘“‘And where were you last month?” 

“In St. Louis.” 

“And the month before?” 

“T went to Washington with my husband and — ” 

“Precisely — that’s enough!” he waved his thin hand. 

“But it rests me to travel,’’ Isabelle protested. 

“It seems to rest you. Did you ever think what all 
those whisking changes in your environment mean to the 
brain cells? And it isn’t just travelling, with new scenes, 
new people; it is everything in your life, —every act from 
the time you get up to the time you go to bed. You are 





TOGETHER 243 


cramming those brain cells all the time, giving them new 
records to make, — even when you lie down with an illus- 
trated paper. Why, the merest backwoodsman in Iowa 
is living faster in a sense than Cicero or Webster. ... The 
gray matter cannot stand the strain. It isn’t the quality 
of what it has to do; itisthe mere amount! Understand?” 

“T see! I never thought before what it means to be 
tired. I have, worked the machine foolishly. But one 
must travel fast — be geared up, as you say — or fall behind 
and become dull and uninteresting. What is living if we 
can’t keep the pace others do?” 

“Must we? Is that living?’ he asked ironically. “I 
have a diary kept by an old great-aunt of mine. She 
was a country clergyman’s wife, away back in a little vil- 
lage. She brought up four sons, helped her husband fit 
them for college as well as pupils he took in, and baked and 
washed and sewed. And learned German for amusement 
when shewas fifty! Ithink she lived somewhat, but she prob- 
ably never lived at the pressure you have the past month.” 

“One can’t repeat — can’t go back to old conditions. 
Each generation has its own lesson, its own way.”’ 

“But is our way living? Are we living now this very 
minute, listening to music we don’t apparently care for, that 
means nothing to us, with our mind crammed full of distract- 
ing purposes and reflections? When I read my aunt Mer- 
elda’s journal of the silent winter days on the snowy farm, 
I think she lived, as much as one should live. Living doesn’t 
- consist in the number of muscular or nervous reactions that 
- you undergo.” 

“What is your formula?” 

“We haven’t yet mentioned the most formidable reason 
for the American plague,’”’ he continued, ignoring her ques- 
tion. “It has to do with that troublesome term we evaded, 
— the Soul.” 

“The Soul?” . 

The music had come to an end, and the people were 
moving about them. Cornelia came-up and drawled: — 


244 TOGETHER 


“Tom and I are going on, — will you go with us?” 

When Isabelle reached her hostess, she had but one idea 
in her mind, and exclaimed impulsively to that somewhat 
bored lady : = 

“Who is that man just going out? With gray hair? 
The tall, thin man?” 

“Dr. Renault? He’s a surgeon, operates on children, — 
has done something or other lately.” 

She smiled at Isabelle’s impulsiveness, and turned to 
another. | ; 

‘A surgeon,’ Isabelle thought. ‘What has he to do with 
the soul?’ 

In a few moments she had a chance to repeat her question 
aloud to Dr. Renault when they left the house together. 

“Did you ever hear,” he replied directly, “that a house 
divided against itself will fall?” 

“Of course.” 

“T should say that this national disease, which we have 
been discussing, is one of the results of trying to live with 
divided souls, — souls torn, distraught!” 

‘And we need —?” 

“A religion.” 

The doctor raised his hat and sauntered down the avenue. 

“A religion!” Isabelle murmured, — a queer word, here 
at the close of Mrs. Bertram’s pleasantly pagan Sunday 
afternoon, with ladies of undoubted social position getting 
into their motors, and men lighting cigarettes and cigars 
to solace them on the way to their clubs. Religion! and the 
need of it suggested by a surgeon, a man of science... . — 

When the three reached the Woodyards’ house, Conny 
paused with, ‘ When shall I see you again?” which Isabelle 
understood as a polite dismissal. Cairy to her surprise 
proposed to walk to the hotel with her. Isabelle felt that 
this arrangement was not in the plan, but Conny merely 
waved her hand with a smile, — ‘ By-by, children.” 

They sauntered up the avenue, at the pace required by 
Cairy’s disability. The city, although filled with people 


=. : 


TOGETHER 245 


loitering in holiday ease, had a strange air of subdued life, 
of Sunday peace, not disturbed even by the dashing motors. 
Isabelle, bubbling with the day’s impressions, was eager 
to talk, and Cairy, as she had found him before at the Vir- 
ginia Springs, was a sympathetic man to be with. He told 
her the: little semi-scandalous story of her recent hostess. 
; “ And now they have settled down to bring up the chil- 
dren like any good couple, and it threatens to end on the‘ live 
happy ever after’ note. Sam Bertram is really domestic, — 
you can see he admires her tremendously. He sits and 
listens to the music and nods his sleepy old head.” 

“And the—other one?” Isabelle asked, laughing in 
spite of the fact that she felt a little shocked. 

“Who knows? ... The lady disappears at rare inter- 
vals, and there are rumors. But she is a good sort, and 
you see Sam admires her, needs her.” 

“But it is rather awful when you stop to think of 
mit! 72 

“Why more awful than if Sam had stuck a knife into the 
other’s ribs or punctured him with a bullet? ... I think 
it is rather more intelligent.”’ 

Cairy did not know Renault. “Mrs. Bertram gets every~ 
body,” he said. Isabelle felt no inclination to discuss with 
Cairy her talk about neurasthenia and religion. So their 
chatter drifted from the people they had seen to Cairy him- 
self, his last play, “which was a rank fizzle,” and the plan 
of the new one. One got on fast and far with Cairy, if one 
Were a womb’n and felt his charm. By the time they had 
reached the hotel, he was counselling Isabelle most wisely 
how she should settle herself in New York. “ But why don’t 
you live in the country? in that old village Mrs. Woodyard 
told me about? The city is nothing but a club, a way- 
station these days, a sort of Fair, you know, where you come 
two or three times a year to see your dressmaker and hear 
the gossip.” 

_ “But there’s my husband!” Isabelle suggested. ‘ You 
see his business is here.” 


246 TOGETHER 


“T forgot the husband, — make him change his business 
Besides, men like country life.” 


Isabelle found her husband comfortably settled near a 
hot radiator, reading a novel. Lane occasionally read 
novels on a Sunday when there was absolutely nothing else 
to do. He read them slowly, with a curious interest in the 
world they depicted, the same kind of interest that he would 
take in a strange civilization, like that of the Esquimaux, 
where phenomena would have only an amusing significance. 
He dropped his glasses when his wife appeared and helped 
himself to a fresh cigar from the box beside him. 

“Have a good time 9? 

It was the formula that he used for almost every occupa- 
tion pursued by women. Isabelle, throbbing with her new 
impressions and ideas, found the question depressing. John 
was not the person to pour out one’s mind to when that 
mind was in a tumult. He would listen kindly, assent at 
the wrong place, and yawn at the end. Undoubtedly his 
life was exciting, but it had no fine shades. He was growing 
stout, Isabelle perceived, and a little heavy. New York 
life was not good for him. 

“T thought Conny’s house and the people so — interest- 
ing,’’ — she used the universal term for a new sensation, — 
“didn’t you?” 

“Yes, — very pleasant,’’ he assented as he would have 
if it had been the Falkners or the Lawtons or the Frasers. 

In the same undiscriminating manner he agreed with her 
other remarks about the Woodyards. People were people 
to him, and life was life, — more or less the same thing 
everywhere; while Isabelle felt the fine shades. 

“T think it would be delightful to know people worth 
while,” she observed almost childishly, ‘people who 
do something.” ; 

“You mean writers and artists and that kind? I guess 
it isn’t very difficult,” Lane replied indulgently. 

Isabelle sighed. Such a remark betrayed his remoteness 


TOGETHER 247 


from her idea; she would have it all to do for herself, when 
she started her life in New York. 

“T think I shall make over the place at Grafton,’ she 
said after a time. Her husband looked at her with 
some surprise. She was standing at the window, gazing 
down into the cavernous city in the twilight. He could 
not possibly follow the erratic course of ideas through her 
brain, the tissue of impression and suggestion, that resulted 
in such a conclusion. 

“Why? what do you want to do with it? I thought you 
didn’t care for the country.” 

“One must have a background,” she replied vaguely, 
and continued to stare at the city. This was the sum of 
her new experience, with all its-elements. The man calmly 
smoking there did not realize that his life, their life, was to 
‘be affected profoundly by such trivial matters as a Sun- 
day luncheon, a remark by Tom Cairy, the savage aspect 
of the great city seen through April mist, and the low vitality 
of a nervous organism. But everything plays its part with 
an impressionable character in which the equilibrium is 
not found and fixed. As the woman stared down into the 
twilight, she seemed to see afar off what she had longed 
for, held out her hands towards, — life. 

Pictures, music, the play of interesting personalities, 
books, plays, — ideas, — that was the note of the higher 
civilization that Conny had caught. If Conny had absorbed 
all this so quickly, why could not she? Cornelia Wood- 
yard —that somewhat ordinary schoolmate of her youth 
— was becoming for Isabelle a powerful source of sugges-* 
tion, just as Isabelle had been for Bessie Falkner in the 
Torso days. | 





CHAPTER XXIX 


WHEN Mrs. Woodyard returned to her house at nine 
o’clock in the evening and found it dark, no lights in the 
drawing-room or the library, no fire lighted in either room, 
she pushed the button disgustedly and flung her.cloak into 
a chair. 

“Why is the house like a tomb?” she demanded sharply 
of the servant, who appeared tardily. 

“Mrs. Woodyard was not expected until later.” 

“That should make no difference,” she observed curtly, 
and the flustered servant hastened to pull curtains, light 
lamps, and build up the fire. 

Conny disliked entering a gloomy house. Moreover, she 
disliked explaining things to servants. Her attitude was 
that of the grand marshal of life, who once having ex- 
pressed an idea or wish expects that it will be properly ful- 
filled. This attitude worked perfectly with Perey and the 
children, and usually with servants. No one “got more 
results”? in her establishment with less worry and thought 
than Mrs. Woodyard. The resolutely expectant attitude 
is a large part of efficiency. 

After the servant had gathered up her wrap and gloves, 
Conny looked over the room, gave another curve, to the 
dark curtains, and ordered whiskey and cigarettes. It 
was plain that she was expecting some one. She had gone 
to the Hillyers’ to dinner as she had promised Percy, and 
just us the party was about to leave for the opera had 
pleaded a headache and returned home. It was true that 
she was not well; the winter had taxed her strength, and 
she lived quite up to the margin of her vitality. That was 
her plan, also. Moreover, the day had contained rather 
more than its share of problems. . . 

248 “, 


TOGETHER 249 


When Cairy’s light step pressed the stair, she turned 
quickly from the fire. 

“Ah, Tommy, — so you got my message?” She greeted 
him with a slow smile. ‘‘ Where were you dining?” 

“With the Lanes. Mrs. Lane and I saw The Doll’s 
House this afternoon.”” As Conny did not look pleased, 
he added, “It is amusing to show Ibsen to a child.” 

“Tsabelle Lane is no child.” 

“She takes Shaw and Ibsen with that childlike earnest- 
ness which has given those two great fakirs a posthumous 
vogue,” Cairy remarked with a yawn. “If it were not for 
America, — for the Mississippi Valley of America, one might 
say, — Ibsen would have had a quiet grave, and Shaw might 
remain the Celtic buffoon. But the women of the Mississippi 
Valley have made a gospel out of them. ... It is as inter- 
esting to hear them discuss the new dogmas on marriage 
as it is to see a child eat candy.” 

“You seem to find it so— with Isabelle.” 

“She is very intelligent — she will get over the Shaw- 
measles quickly.” 

“You think so?”’ Conny queried. “ Well, with all that 
money she might do something, if she had it in her... . 
But she is middle class, in ideas, — always was.”’ 

That afternoon Isabelle had confided her schoolgirl opin- 
ion of Mrs. Woodyard to Cairy. The young man balancing 
the two judgments smiled. 

“She is good to behold,’ he observed, helping himself 


to whiskey. 


“Not your kind, Tommy!” Conny warned with a laugh. 
“The Prices are very good people. You’ll find that Isabelle 
will keep you at the proper distance.”’ 

Cairy yawned as if the topic did not touch him. “I 
thought you were going to Manon with the Hillyers.” 

“JT was, —but I came home instead!” Conny replied 


| softly, and their eyes met. 


“That was kind of you,” he murmured, and they were 
silent a long time. 


& 


250 TOGETHER « 


It had come over her suddenly in the afternoon that she — 
must see Cairy, must drink again the peculiar and potent 
draught which he alone of men seemed to be able to offer 
her. So she had written the note and made the excuse. 
She would not have given up the Hillyers altogether. They 
were important to Perey just now, and she expected to 
see the Senator there and accomplish something with him. 
It was clearly her duty, her plan of life as she saw it, for 
her to go to the Hillyers’. But having put in an appearance, 
flattered the old lawyer, and had her little talk with Senator 
Thomas before dinner, she felt that she had earned her 
right to a few hours of sentimental indulgence. .. . 

Conny, sitting there before the fire, looking her most seduc- 
tive best, had the clear conscience of a child. Her life, she 
thought, was arduous, and she met its demands admi- 
rably, she also thought. The subtleties of feeling and 
perception never troubled her. She felt entitled to her 
sentimental repose with Cairy as she felt entitled to her 
well-ordered house. She did not see that her “affair” inter- 
fered with her duties, or with Percy, or with the children. 
If it should, — then it would be time to consider. .. . 

“Tommy,” she murmured plaintively, “I am so tired! 
You are the only person who rests me.” 

She meant it quite literally, that he always rested and 
soothed her, and that she was grateful to him for it. But 
the Southerner’s pulses leaped at the purring words. To him 
they meant more, oh, much more! He gave her strength; 
his love was the one vital thing she had missed in life. The 
sentimentalist must believe that; must believe that he is 
giving, and that some generous issue justifies his passion. 
Cairy leaning forward caressingly said :— 

“You make me feel your love to-night! . . . Wonderful 
one! ... It is all ours to-night, in this still room.’ 

She did not always make him feel that she loved him, 
far from it. And it hurt his sentimental soul, and injured 
his vanity. He would be capable of a great folly with 
sufficient delusion, but he was not capable of loving intensely 


TOGETHER 251 


a woman who did not love him. To-night they seemed in 
harmony, and as their lips met at last, the man had the 
desired illusion — she was his! 

They are not coarsely physiological, — these Cairys, the 
born lovers. They look abhorrently on mere flesh. With 
them it must always be the spirit that leads to the flesh, 
and that is their peculiar danger. Society can always take 
care of the simply licentious males; women know them and 
for the most part hate them. But the poet lovers — the men 
of “temperament’’ — are fatal to its prosaic peace. These 
must “love” before they can desire, must gratify that 
emotional longing first, pour themselves out, and have the 
ecstasy before the union. That is their fatal nature. The 
state of love is their opiate, and each time they dream, it 
is the only dream. Each woman who can give them the 
dream is the only woman, — she calls to them with a single 
voice. And they divine afar off those women whose voices 


* will ‘ealle« .. 





What would come after? ... The woman looked up 
at the man with a peculiar light in her eyes, a gentle- 
ness which never appeared except for him, and held him 
from her, dreaming intangible things. . .. She, too, could 
dream with him, — that was the wonder of it all to her! 
This was the force that had taken her out of her ordinary self. 
She slipped into nothing — never drifted — looked blind fate 
between the eyes. But now she dreamed! .. . And as the 
man spoke to her, covered her with his warm terms of 
endearment, she listened — and forgot her little world. 

Even the most selfish woman has something of the large 
mother, the giving quality, when a man’s arms hold her. 
She reads the man’s need and would supply it. .She would 
comfort the inner sore, supply the lack. And for this mo- 
ment, Conny was not selfish: she was thinking of her 

lover’s needs, and how she could meet them. 
Thus the hour sped. 

“You love — you love!” the man said again and again, — 
to convince himself. 


252 TOGETHER 


Conny smiled disdainfully, as at the childish iteration 
of a child, but said nothing. Finally with a long sigh, 
coming back from her dream, she rose and stood thought- 
fully before the fire, looking down at Cairy reflectively. He 
had the bewildered feeling of not understanding what was 
in her mind. 

“T will dine with you to-morrow,” she remarked at last. 

Cairy laughed ironically. It was the perfect anti-climax, — 
after all this unfathomable silence, after resting in his arms, 
— “] will dine with you to-morrow!”’ 

But Conny never wasted words, — the commonest had 
a meaning. While he was searching for the meaning under 
this commonplace, there was the noise of some one entering 
the hall below. Conny frowned. Another interruption in 
her ordered household! Some servant was coming in at the 
front door. Or a burglar? 

If it were a burglar, it was a very well assured one that 
closed the door carefully, took time to lay down hat and 
coat, and then with well-bred quiet ascended the stairs. 

“Tt must be Percy,’ Conny observed, with a puzzled 
frown. “Something must have happened to bring him 
back to-night.” 

Woodyard, seeing a light in the library, looked in, the 
traveller’s weary smile on his face. 

“Hello, Percy!’ Conny drawled. “What brings you 
back at this time?” 

Woodyard came into the room draggingly, nodded to 
Cairy, and drew a chair up to the fire. His manner showed 
no surprise at the situation. 

“Some things came up at Albany,” he replied vaguely. 
“T shall have to go back to-morrow.” 

“What is it?” his wife demanded quickly. 

“Will you give me a cigarette, Tom?” he asked equably, 
indicating that he preferred not to mention his business, 
whatever it might be. Cairy handed him his cigarette case. 

“These are so much better than the brand Con supplies 
me with,” he observed lightly. 


) 


TOGETHER 253 


He examined the cigarette closely, then lit it, and re- 
marked : — 

“The train was beastly hot. You seem very comfortable 
here.” 

Cairy threw away his cigarette and said good-by. 

“Tom,” Conny called from the door, as he descended, 
“don’t forget the dinner.’”’ She turned to Percy, — “Tom 
is taking me to dinner to-morrow.” 

There was silence between husband and wife until the 
door below clicked, and then Conny murmured interroga- 
tively, “ Well?” 

“T came back,” Percy remarked calmly, ‘ because, I made 
up my mind that there is something rotten on in that Com- 
mission.” 

Conny, after her talk with the Senator, knew rather more 
about the Commission than her husband; but she merely 
asked, “What do you mean?” 

“JT mean that I want to find just who is interested in 
this up-state water-power grant before I go any farther. 
That is why I came down,—to see one or two men, 
especially Princhard.”’ 

While Cornelia was thinking of certain remarks that the 
Senator had made, Percy added, “I am not the Senator’s 
hired man.” 

“Of course not!” 

Her husband’s next remark was startling, — “I have 
almost made up my mind to get out, Con, — to take Jack- 
son’s offer of a partnership and stick to the law.” 

Here, Conny recognized, was a crisis, and like most crises 
it came unexpectedly. Conny rose to meet it. Husband 
and wife discussed the situation, personal and political, of 
Percy’s fortunes for a long time, and it was not settled when 
it was time for bed. 

“Con,” her husband said, still sitting before the fire as 
she turned out the lights and selected a book for night 
reading, ‘“‘aren’t you going pretty far with Tom?” 

Conny paused and looked at him questioningly, 


' 254 TOGETHER 


“Yes,” she admitted in an even voice. ‘I have gone 
pretty far. ... I wanted to tell you about it. But this 
political business has worried you so much lately that | 
didn’t like to add anything.” 

As Percy made no reply, she said tentatively : — 

‘“‘T may go farther, Percy. ... Tom loves me — very 
much !”’ 

“Tt means that — you care for him — the same way?” 

‘“‘He’s given me something,’ Conny replied evasively, 
“something I never felt — just that way — before.” 

“Yes, Tom is of an emotional nature,’”’ Woodyard re- 
marked dryly. 

“You don’t like Tom. Men wouldn’t, I can understand. | 
He isn’t like most men. . .. But women like him!” 

Then for a while they waited, until he spoke, a little wea- 
rily, dispassionately. 

“You know, Con, I always want you to have everything 
that is best for you — that you feel you need to complete 
your life. We have been the best sort of partners, 
trying not to limit each other in any way. ... I know 
I have never been enough for you, given you all that you 
ought to have, in some ways. I am not emotional, as Tom 
is! And you have done everything for me. I shall never 
forget that. So if another can do something for you, 
make your life happier, fuller, — you must do it, take it. 
I should be a beastly pig to interfere !”’ 

He spoke evenly, and at the end he smiled rather wanly. 

“J know you mean it, Percy,—every word. But I 
shouldn’t want you to be unhappy,” replied Conny, in a sub- 
dued voice. Mi 

“You need not think of me —if you feel sure that this is 
best for you.” 

“You know that I could not do anything that might 
hurt our life, — that is the most important !” 

Her husband nodded. 

“The trouble is that I want both!” she analyzed gravely; 
“both in different ways.” 


TOGETHER 255 


A slight smile crept under her husband’s mustache, but 
he made no comment. 

‘“T shall always be honest with you, Percy, and if at any 
time it becomes —”’ 

“You needn’t explain,” Percy interrupted hurriedly. ‘I 
don’t ask! I don’t want to know what is peculiarly your 
own affair, as this.... As I said, you must live your 
life as you choose, not hampered by me. We have always 
believed that was the best way, and meant it, too, haven’t 
we?” 

“But you have never wanted your own life,’? Conny re- 
marked reflectively. | ; 

“No, not that way!’ The look on Percy’s face made 
Conny frown. She was afraid that he was keeping some- 
thing back. 

‘“‘T suppose it is different with a man.” 

“No, not always,’ and the smile reappeared under the 
mustache, a painful smile. ‘“‘ But you see in my case I never 
wanted — more.” 

“Oh!” murmured Conny, more troubled than ever. 

“You won’t do it lightly, whatever you do, I know! ... 
And I’ll manage — I shall be away a good deal this winter.” 

There was another long silence, and when Conny sighed and 
prepared to leave the room, Percy spoke: — 

‘““There’s one thing, Conny. ... This mustn’t affect the 
children.” 

“Oh, Percy!” she protested. “Of course not.” 

“You must be careful that it won’t —in any way, you 
understand. That would be very — wrong.” 

“Of course,’ Conny admitted in the same slightly injured 
tone, as if he were undervaluing her character. ‘‘ What- 
ever I do,” she added, “I shall not sacrifice you or the 
children, naturally.” 

“We needn’t talk more about it, then, need we?”’ 

Conny slowly crossed the room to her husband, and putting 
one hand on his shoulder she leaned down and pushed up the 
hair from his forehead, murmuring : — 


256 TOGETHER 


“You know I love you, Percy!” 

“‘T know it, dear,’”’ he answered, caressing her face with his 
fingers. “If I don’t happen to be enough for you, it is my 
fault — not yours.” 

“Tt isn’t that !’’ she protested. But she could not explain 
what else it was that drew her to Cairy so strongly. “It 
mustn’t make any difference between us. It won’t, will it?” 

Percy hesitated a moment, still caressing the lovely face. 

“JT don’t think so, Con. ... But you can’t tell that 
now — do you think?” 

“Tt mustn’t!’”’ she said decisively, as if the matter was 
wholly in her own hands. And leaning still closer towards 
him, she whispered: ‘‘ You are wonderful to me. A man 
who can take things as you do is really —big!”’ She meant 
him to understand that she admired him more than ever, 
that in respect to character she recognized that he was 
larger and finer than the other man. 

Percy kissed the cheek so close to his lips. Conny shrank 
back perceptibly. Some elemental instinct of the female 
pushed its way through her broad-minded modern philosophy 
and made her shudder at the double embrace. She con- 
trolled herself at once and again bowed her beautiful head 
to his. But Percy did not offer to kiss her. 

“There are other things in life than passion,” she re- 
marked slowly. 

Percy looking directly into her eyes observed dryly: 
“Oh, many more. ... But passion plays the deuce with 
the rest sometimes !”’ 

And he held open the door for his wife.to leave the room. 


CHAPTER XXX 


“THatT snipe!’’? Conny called Margaret’s husband, Mr. 
Lawrence Pole. Larry, as he was known in his flourishing 
days when he loafed in brokers’ offices, and idiotically 
dribbled away his own fortune and most of his wife’s, rarely 
earned a better word than this epithet. ‘She ought to 
leave him — divorce him — get rid of such rubbish some- | 
how,’ Conny continued with unwonted heat, as the tired 
motor chugged up the steep Westchester hillside on its way 
to Dudley Farms where the Poles lived. 

“Perhaps Margaret has prejudices,” Isabelle suggested. 
““You know she used to be ee and there’s her father, 
the Bishop.” 

“Tt would take a good many bishops to keep me tied to 
Larry !” 

Conny was enjoying the early spring air, the virginal 
complexion of the April landscape. She surveyed the scene 
from Isabelle’s motor with complacent superiority. How 
much better she had arranged her life than either Margaret 
or Isabelle! After the talk with Percy the previous evening, 
she felt a new sense of power and competency, with a touch 
of gratitude for that husband who had so frankly and un- 
selfishly “accepted her point of view”’ and allowed her ‘to 
have her own life”? without a distressing sense of wrecking 
anything. Conny’s conscience was simple, almost rudi- 
mentary; but it had to be satisfied, such as it was. To-day 
it was completely satisfied, and she took an ample pleasure 
in realizing how well she had managed a difficult situation,— 
and also in the prospect of dinner with her lover in the 
evening. 

That morning before the motor had come for her, she had 
gone over with Percy the complicated situation that had 

6 257 


258 TOGETHER 


developed at Albany. It was her way in a crisis to let him 
talk it all out first, and then later, preferably when he came 
to her room in the morning after his breakfast with the chil- 
dren, to suggest those points which she wished to determine 
his action. Thus her husband absorbed her views when they 
would make most impression and in time came to believe 
that they were all evolved from his inner being. . . . To-day 
when he appeared shortly before her coffee, she had glanced at 
him apprehensively out of her sleepy eyes. But he betrayed 
no sign of travail of spirit. Though naturally weary after 
his brief rest, he had the same calm, friendly manner that was 
habitual with him. So they got at once to the political 
situation. 

She was content with the way in which she had led him, 
for the time at least, to resolve his doubts and suspicions. 
They had no reason to suspect the Senator, — he had always 
encouraged Woodyard’s independent position in politics 
and pushed him. There was not yet sufficient evidence of 
fraud in the hearings before the Commission to warrant 
ageressive action. It would be a pity to fire too soon, or to 
resign and lose an opportunity later. It would mean not 
only political oblivion, but also put him in a ridiculous ~ 
light in the press, and suggest cowardice, etc. So he had 
gone away to attend to some matters at his office, and take 
an afternoon train back to Albany, with the conviction that 
“he must do nothing hurriedly, before the situation had 
cleared up.”’ Those were his own phrases; Conny always pre- 
ferred to have Percy use his own words to express his resolves. 

There was only one small matter on her mind: she must 
see the Senator and find out — well, as much as she could 
discreetly, and be prepared for the next crisis. . . 

““T don’t see why Margaret buries herself like this: ”” Conny 
remarked, coming back to the present forepialings with a 
disgusted glance at the little settlement of Dudley Farms, 
a sorry combination of the suburb and the village, which 
they were approaching. ‘She might at least have a flat 
in the city somewhere, like others,’ 


TOGETHER 259 


“Margaret wants the children to be in the country. 
Probably she gets less of Larry out here, — that may com- 
pensate !”’ 

“As for the children,’ Conny pronounced with lazy 
dogmatism, ‘‘I don’t believe in fussing. Children must camp 
where it’s best for the parents. They can get fresh air in the 
Park.” 

The motor turned in at a neglected driveway, forbidding 
with black tree-trunks, and whirled up to the piazza of a 
brick house, an ugly survival of the early country mansion. 
Mrs. Pole, who was bending over a baby carriage within a 
sun parlor, came forward, a smile of welcome on her pale 
face. She seemed very small and fragile as she stood above 
them on the steps, and her thin, delicate face had the marked 
lines of a woman of forty. She said in her slow, Southern 
voice, which had a pleasant human quality : — 

“T hope you weren’t mired. The roads are something 
awful about here. Jam so glad to see you both.” 

When she spoke her face lost some of the years. 

“Tt is a long way out, — one can’t exactly run in on you, 
Margaret! If it hadn’t been for Isabelle’s magnificent car, 
you might have died without seeing me!’’ Conny poured 
forth. 

“It 7s a journey; but you see people don’t run in on us 
often.” 

“You’ve got a landscape,”’ Conny continued, turning to 
look across the bare treetops towards the Sound. It would 
have been a pleasant prospect except for the eruption of 
small houses on every side. ‘But how can you stand it 
the whole year round? Are there any civilized people — in 
those houses?”’ She indicated vaguely the patch of wooden 
villas below. 

“Very few, I suppose, according to your standard, Cornelia. 
But we don’t know them. I pulled up the drawbridge when 
we first came.’ 

Mrs. Pole’s thin lips twitched with mirth, and Conny, who 
was never content with mere inference, asked bluntly : — 


260 TOGETHER 


“Then what do you do with yourselves — evenings ?”’ 
Her tone reflected the emptiness of the landscape, and she 
added with a treble laugh, “I’ve always wondered what 
suburban life is like!” 

“Oh, you eat and read and sleep. Then there are the 
children daytimes. I help teach ’em. We live the model 
life, — flowers and shrubs in the summer, I suppose. . 
The Bishop was with me for a time.”’ 

The large bare drawing-room, which was sunnily lighted 
from the southwest, was singularly without the usual furni- 
ture of what Conny called ‘civilized life.” There were no 
rugs, few chairs, but one table, such as might be made by the 
village carpenter and stained black, which was littered with 
books and magazines. There was also a large writing cabinet 


of mahogany, —a magnificent piece of Southern colonial 


design, — and before the fire a modern couch. Conny 
inventoried all this in a glance. She could not ‘make it 
out.’”’ ‘They can’t be as poor as that,’ she reflected, and 
turned to the books on the table. 

“Weiniger’s Sex and Character,’ she announced, ‘‘ Brieux’s 
Maternité, Lavedan, Stendhal, Strobel on Child Life, — well, 
you do read! And this?” She held up a yellow volume 
of French plays. ‘‘What do you do with this when the 
Bishop comes?” 

“The Bishop is used to me now. Besides, he doesn’t 
see very well, poor dear, and has forgotten his French. Have 
you read that book of Weiniger’s? It is a good dose for 
woman’s conceit these days.” 

There was a touch of playful cynicism in the tone, which 
went with the fleeting smile. Mrs. Pole understood Cornelia 
Woodyard perfectly, and was amused by her. But Conny’s 
‘coarse and determined handling of life did not fascinate 
her fastidious nature as it had fascinated Isabelle’s. 

Conny continued to poke among the books, emitting com- 
ments as she happened upon unexpected things. It was 
the heterogeneous reading of an untrained woman, who was 
seeking blindly in many directions for guidance, for light, 


\ 


o 
TOGETHER 261 


trying to appease an awakened intellect, and to answer cer- — 
tain gnawing questions of her soul. 

Isabelle and Margaret talked of their visit at the Virginia 
Springs. In the mature face, Isabelle was seeking the 
blond-haired girl, with deep-set blue eyes, and sensitive 
mouth, that she had admired at St. Mary’s. Now it was not 
even pretty, although it spoke of race, for the bony features, 
the high brow, the thin nose, had emerged, as if chiselled 
from the flesh by pain. : 

‘She has suffered,’ Isabelle thought, ‘suffered — and 
lived.’ 

Conny had recounted to Isabelle on their way out 
some of the rumors about the Poles. Larry Pole was a 
weakling, had gone wrong in money matters, — nothing 
that had flared up in scandal, merely family transactions. 
Margaret had taken the family abroad — she had inherited 
something from her mother — and suddenly they had come 
back to New York, and Larry had found a petty job in the 
city. Evidently, from the bare house, their hiding them- 
selves out here, most of the wife’s money had gone, too. 

Pity ! because Margaret was proud. She had her Virginian 
mother’s pride with a note of difference. -The mother had 
been proud in the conventional way, of her family, her 
position, —things. Margaret had the pride of accomplish- 
ment, — of deeds. She was the kind who would have gone 
ragged with a poet or lived content in a sod hut with a Man. 
And she had married this Larry Pole, who according to 
Conny looked seedy and was often rather “boozy.” How 
could she have made such a mistake, — Margaret of all 
women? That Englishman Hollenby, who really was some- 
body, had been much interested in her. Why hadn’t she 
married him? Nobody would know the reason... . 

The luncheon was very good. The black cook, “a relic 
of my mother’s establishment,’ as Margaret explained, 
gave them a few savory family dishes, and there was a light 
French wine. Margaret ate little and talked little, seeming 
to enjoy the vivacity of the other women. 


262 TOGETHER 


“Tell about your visit to the Gorings,’” Conny drawled. 
‘“Percy’s cousin, Eugene Goring, who married Aline, you 
know. Boots in the bath-tub, and the babies running around 
naked, and Aline lost in the metaphysics of the arts, making 
chairs.’’ | 

And Isabelle recounted what she had seen of Aline’s 
establishment in St. Louis, with its total disregard of what 
Conny called the ‘‘decencies” of life. They all laughed at 
her picture of their ‘‘ wood-nymph,” as they had named Aline. 

“ And Eugene talking anarchy, and washing the. dishes; — 
it sounds like a Weber and Field’s farce,” gurgled Conny. 
“He wrote Percy about lecturing in New York, — wanted to 
come East. But Percy couldn’t do anything for him. It 
isn’t a combination to make a drawing-room impression.”’ 

‘“But,’’ Margaret protested, “‘ Aline is a person, and that 
is more than you can say of most of us married women. She 
has kept her personality.” . 

“Tf I were ’Gene,’’ Conny replied contemptuously, ‘‘I’d 
tone her ‘ personality’ down.” 

‘“‘He’s probably big enough to respect it.” — 

There followed a discussion of the woman’s part in mar- 
riage, Margaret defending independence, “ the woman’s right 
to live for herself,’’ and Conny taking the practical view. 

“She can’t be anything any way, just by herself. She 
had better make the most of the material she’s got to work 
with — or get another helping,” she added, thinking of 
Larry. 

“And Aline isn’t happy,” Isabelle remarked ; “she has a look 
on her face as if she were a thousand miles away, and had 
forgotten her marriage as much as she could. Her chairs 
and tables are just ways of forgetting.” 

“But they have something to think about, — those two. 
They don’t vegetate.”’ 

“T should say they had, — but no anarchy in my domes- 
tic circle, thank you!’”’ Conny observed. . 

“T shouldn’t object to anarchy,” sighed Margaret, with 
her whimsical smile. 


TOGETHER 263 


“Margaret is bored,’ Isabelle pronounced, “simply aw- 
fully bored. She’s so bored that I expect some day she will 
poison herself and the children, merely to find out what 
comes next.” 

“No wonder — buried in the snowdrifts out here,’’ Conny 
agreed. “Isn’t there anything you want to do, even some- 
thing wicked?” 

“Yes,’’ Mrs. Pole answered half seriously. ‘There is one 
thing I’d like to do before I die.” 

“Tell us!” 

“Td like to find Somebody — man or woman — who 
cared for the things I care for — sky and clouds and moun- 
tains, — and go away with him anywhere for — a little while, 
just a little while,’ she drawled dreamily, resting her elbows 
on the table. 

“FHlope! Fie, fie!’? Conny laughed. 

“My mother’s father had a plantation in one of the Wind- 
ward Islands,’ Margaret continued. “It must be nice down 
there — warm and sunny. I’d like to lie out on the beach 
and forget children and servants and husbands, and stop 
wondering what life is. Yes, I’d like a vacation —in the 
Windward Islands, with somebody who understood.” 

“To wit, a man!’ added Conny. 

“Yes, a man! But only for the trip.” 

They laughed a good deal about Margaret’s vacation, 
called her the “ Windward Islands,’’ and asked her to make 
reservations for them in her Paradise when they had found 
desirable partners. 

“Only, I should have to bring John, and he wouldn’t 
know what to do with himself on a beach,” Isabelle remarked. 
“JT don’t know any one else to take.” 

“You mustn’t go Windwarding until you have to,” 
Margaret explained... . 

At the dessert, the children came in, — two boys and a 
girl. The elder boy was eight, with his mother’s fair hair, 
blue eyes, and fine features, and the same suggestion of race 
in the narrow high brow, the upward poise of the head. 


264 TOGETHER 


His younger brother was nondescript, with dark hair and 
full lips. Margaret observed her children with a curiously 
detached air, Isabelle thought. Was she looking for signs 
of Larry in that second son? Alas, she might see Larry 
always, with the cold apprehension of a woman too wise to 
deceive herself! The little girl, fresh from her nap, was 
round and undefined, and the mother took her into her 
arms, cuddling her close to her breast, as if nothing, not even 
the seed of Larry, could separate her from this one; as if 
she felt in her heart all the ills and sorrows, the woman’s 
pains to be, — the eternal feminine defeat, —in this tiny 
ball of freshness. And the ironical smile subtly softened to 
a glow of affection. Here, at least, was an illusion! 

Isabelle, watching these two, understood — all the lines, 
the smile, the light cynicism —the Windward Islands! 
She put her arms impulsively about the mother and the child, 
hugging them closely. Margaret looked up into her shining 
eyes and pressed her hand... . 

“There are some cigarettes in the other room,’ Margaret 
suggested; “we’ll build up the fire and continue theargument | 
in favor of the Windward Islands.” | 

“Tt is a long way to New York over that road,’’ Conny 
observed. “I have an engagement.” 

Now that she had satisfied her curiosity about “how the 
Poles lived,’ she began to think of her dinner with Cairy, 
and was fearful lest she might be delayed. 

“Spend the night,” suggested Margaret; but Isabelle, who 
understood Conny, telephoned at once for the motor. 

“You aren’t going back to the West, Isabelle ?”’ Margaret 
asked, while they waited for the motor. “ Won’t you miss 
ltgee 

“Miss the West? Did you ever know a woman that 
had escaped from the Mississippi Valley who would go back 
there?” Conny drawled. “ Why, Belle is like a girl just out 
of school, looking at the shop windows!” 

Cornelia Woodyard, who had lived a number of years in 
a corner of that same vast valley, looked from metropolitan 


TOGETHER 265 

¥ 
heights on the monotony of the “ middle West.’’ She had the 
New Yorker’s amusing incapacity to comprehend existence 
outside the neighborhood of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. 

“One lives out there,’’ Margaret protested with sudden fire, 
“in those great spaces. Men grow there. They do things. 
When my boys are educated I shall take them away from New 
York, to the Virginia mountains, perhaps, and have them 
grow up there, doing things, real things, working with their 
hands, becoming men! Perhaps not there,” she mused, 
recollecting that the acres of timber and coal in the moun- 
tains, her sons’ inheritance from her vigorous ancestors, 
had been lost to them in a vulgar stock dealer’s gamble by 
their father, — “perhaps out to Oregon, where I have an 
uncle. His father rode his horse all the way from Louisiana 
across the continent, after the War! He had nothing but 
his horse — and before he died he built a city in his new 
country. That is where men do things!” 

Margaret had flashed into life again. As Tom Cairy 
would have said, “Vraiment, ma petite cousine a une 
grande ame — étouffée”’ (For Cairy always made his acute ob- 
servations in the French tongue). 

“There’s something of the Amazon in you, Margaret,”’ 
Conny remarked, “in spite of your desire to seclude yourself 
in the Windward Islands with a suitable mate.” 

The motor finally came puffing up the drive, and the 
women stood on the veranda, prolonging their farewells. 
A round, red, important sun peeped from under the gray 
cloud bank that had lowered all the afternoon, flooding the 
thin branches of the budding trees, falling warm and gold 
across the dead fields. 

“See !’’ Margaret cried, raising her thin arms to the sun. 
“The Promise !”’ 

“T hope it will hold until we reach Jerome Avenue,” 
Conny replied practically, preparing to enter the car. 

“The promise of another life!” 

Margaret was standing in the sun, her nostrils dilated, 
absorbing the light, the source of joy and life. 


266 TOGETHER 


“ Windward Islands, eh?”’ Conny coughed, settling herself. 
comfortably in her corner. 

“The real land,’”? Margaret murmured to herself. 

The chauffeur had reached for the lever when there ap- 
peared on the drive two men bearing something between 
them, a human something, carefully. 

“What’s that!” exclaimed Conny in a frightened voice. 
“What is it?’ she repeated to the chauffeur, — demanding 
of a man something in his province to know. 

“Looks though they had a child—hurt,” the chauffeur 
replied. 

Margaret, shading her eyes with a thin hand, looked down 
the avenue. She made no movement to go towards the men, 
— merely waited motionless for the thing to come. And the 
men came slowly forward, past the car, up the steps. 

It was the older boy. The man who held the head and 
shoulders of the child said, “An accident — not serious, 
I believe.” 

Margaret opened the door and pointed to the lounge 
before the fire. The man who had spoken laid the boy down 
very gently with his head on a cushion, and smoothed back 
the rumpled hair. 

“T will go for the doctor,”’ the other man said, and presently 
there was the sound of the motor leaping down the hill. 

Margaret had dropped on her knees beside the unconscious 
boy, and placed one hand on his brow. “ Bring some water,”’ 
she said to Isabelle, and began to unbutton the torn 
sweater. 

Conny, with one look at the white face and closed eyes, 
went softly out into the hall and sat down. 

“Will you telephone to Dr. W. 8. Rogers in New York, 
and ask him to send some one if he can’t come himself?’ 
Margaret asked the stranger, who was helping her with the 
boy’s clothes. 

“Can I telephone any one else — his father?” the man 
suggested, as he turned to the door. 

‘““No — it would be no use — it’s too late to reach him.” 


TOGETHER 267 


Then she turned again to the boy, who was still uncon- 
scious. . . 

When the man had finished telephoning, he came back 
through the hall, where Conny was sitting. 

e Haw did it happen?”’ she asked. 

“He fell over the culvert, — the high one just as you leave 
the station, you know. He was riding his bicycle, — I saw 
the little chap pushing it up the hill as I got out of the train. 
Then a big touring car passed me, and met another one 
coming down at full speed. I suppose the boy was frightened 
and tried to get too far out on the culvert and fell over. The 
motors didn’t notice him; but when I reached the spot, I 
saw his bicycle hanging on the edge and looked over for 
him, — could just see his head in the bushes and leaves. 
Poor little fellow! It was a nasty fall. But the leaves and 
the rubbish must have broken it somewhat.’ 

“Rob! Rob Falkner!” Isabelle exclaimed, as the man 
turned and met her at the door. “I didn’t recognize you — 
with your beard! How is Bessie?” 

“Very well, I believe. She is in Denver, you know.” 

When he had gone back to the boy, Isabelle said to 
Conny :— 

“We used to know the Falkners very well. There is a 
story! ... Strange he should be here. But I heard he 
was in the Hast somewhere.” 

Conny did not seem interested in Rob Falkner and his 
turning up at this juncture. She sat with a solemn face, 
wondering how she could get back to the city. F inally she 
resolved to telephone Cairy. 


Falkner went over to the unconscious boy, and taking his 
hand, counted the pulse. “It’s all right so far,” he said to the 
mother, who did not hear him. After a time she looked up, 
and her low voice dragged hoarsely, — “ You mustn’t wait. 
The doctor will be here soon, and we can do everything now.” 

“JT will wait until the doctor comes,” Falkner replied 
gently, and stepped to the window to watch for the motor. 


268 TOGETHER 


After the local doctor had come and said, “A slight con- | 
cussion, —nothing serious, I expect,’’ and the boy had revived 
somewhat, Conny departed alone in the motor, Isabelle 
having decided to stay with Margaret over the night. Falk- 
ner helped the doctor carry the patient upstairs, and then 
started to leave. Isabelle waited for him at the door. 

“Mrs. Pole wishes me to thank you for all your kindness.” 

“T shall look in to-morrow morning,” he replied hurriedly. 
“T would stay now until the boy’s father came; but I don’t 
suppose there is anything I can do. I am living at the hotel 
below, and you can telephone if you want me.” 

“You are living here?” 

“Yes; I am working on the new dam, a few miles from 
this place.” 

“JT am so glad to see you again,”’ Isabelle said, the only 
words she could think of. 

“Thank you.” 

Then with a curt nod he was off. He had not shown in 
any way that he was glad to see her, Isabelle reflected. 
Falkner was always moody, but she had thought he liked 
her, — and after all their friendship! Something had kept 
her from asking more about Bessie. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


Larry did not return for dinner, which Isabelle ate by 
herself in sombre silence. When she went upstairs to take 
the mother’s place with the boy, Margaret did not seem te 
notice her husband’s absence, though she inquired repeatedly 
whether the New York doctor had telephoned. Later in 
the evening when Isabelle suggested that some effort should 
be made to find the boy’s father, Margaret exclaimed im- 
patiently : — 

“T can’t tell where he is! ... It is easier for me that 
he isn’t here.”’” And in answer to Isabelle’s expression, she 
added: “Don’t look so shocked, B! Larry gets on my 
nerves frightfully when there is anything extra to bear or do. 
Of course I shall telephone his office in the morning, and he 
will come out at once. That doctor said there would be no 
change before morning. Do you suppose he knows anything, 
that doctor? He had the look of polite ignorance!” 

The New York doctor arrived towards midnight with a 
nurse, and stayed the night to await developments. Mar- 
garet still sat by the boy’s bed, and Isabelle left her huddled 
in a large chair, her eyes staring at the shadow on the faintly 
lighted bed. She had listened to what Dr. Rogers had to 
say without a word. She was almost stone, Isabelle felt, 
looking at her with some awe. What could have made her 
like this ! 

She was still in this stony mood the next morning when 
Larry reached the house. Dressed in a loose black gown that 
clung to herslight figure and brought out the perfect whiteness 
of her skin, she stood and listened indifferently to the vague 
explanation of his absence that her husband poured out pro- 
fusely. Then with a remark that the doctor would see him 
before he went, she left the room. Isabelle, who was present, 

269 


270 TOGETHER. - 


watched the two keenly, trying to divine the secret. To be © 


sure, Larry was not attractive, she decided, —too effusive, too 


anxious to make the right impression, as if he were acting a part: 


before Isabelle, and full of wordy concern for every one. A 
little below the medium height, he stood very erect, consciously 
making the most of hisinches. His sandy hair was thin, and 
he wore glasses, behind which one eye kept winking nervously. 
Neatly, almost fashionably dressed, he bore no evident marks 
of dissipation. After Conny’s description, Isabelle had ex- 
pected to see his shortcomings written all over him., Though 
he was over-mannered and talkative, there was nothing 
to mark him as of the outcast class. ‘One doesn’t despise 
one’s husband because he’s foolish or unfortunate about 
money .matters,’’ Isabelle said to herself. And the sym- 
pathy that she had felt for Margaret began to evaporate. 

“You say that he fell off that embankment?” Larry re- 
marked to her. ‘I was afraid he was too young to ride 
about here by himself with all the motors there are in this 
neighborhood. But Margaret was anxious to have him 
fearless. . . . People who motor are so careless — it has 
become a curse in the country. ... Mrs. Woodyard came 
out with you? Iam so sorry this frightful accident spoiled 
MOUNT MAVe) soe x 

He ran on from remark to remark, with no prompting from 
Isabelle, and had got to their life in Germany when the doctor 
entered the room. Larry shook hands punctiliously with 
him, inquiring in a special tone: “I hope you have good 
news of the little fellow, Doctor? I thought I would not go 
up until I had seen you first.’ 

The doctor cut short the tautare prolixity in a Baste 
voice : — 

“Tt’s concussion, passing off, I think. But nobody can say 
what will happen then, — whether there is anything wrong 
with the cord. It may clear up in a few days. It may not. 
No use speculating. ... JI shall be back to-morrow or 
send some one. Good day.” 

Larry followed him into the hall, talking, questioning, 


ee 


TOGETHER 271 


exclaiming. Isabelle noticed that the doctor gave Pole 
a quick, impatient glance, shaking him off with a curt reply, 
and jumped into the waiting carriage. In some ways men 
read men more rapidly than women can. They look for 
fewer details, with an eye to the essential stuff of character. 

What had the doctor said to Margaret? Had he let her 
know his evident fears? When she came into the room for 
a momeiit, there. was an expression of fixed will in her white 
face, as if she had gone down into herself and found there the 
courage to meet whatever wascoming. ... ‘The older boy, 
too,’ thought Isabelle, — ‘the one so like her, with no out- 
ward trace of the father !’ : 

While Margaret was giving directions for telephoning, 
making in brief phrases her arrangements for the day, 
Falkner came in. He was in his working clothes, and with 
his thick beard and scrubby mustache looked quite rough 
beside the trim Larry. 

“How is the boy?” he demanded directly, going up to 
the mother. 

“Better, I think, — comfortable at least,’’ she answered 
gently. There was a warm gleam in her eyes as she spoke 
to this stranger, as if she had felt his fibre and liked it. 

“T will come in this afternoon. I should like to see him 
when I can.” 

“Yes, this afternoon,” Margaret replied. ‘I should be 
glad to have you come.” 

Isabelle had told Pole that Falkner was the man who 
had found the boy and brought him home. Larry, with the 
subtle air of superiority that clothes seem to give a small 
man, thanked Falkner in suitable language. Isabelle had the 
suspicion that he was debating with himself whether he should 
give this workingman a couple of dollars for.his trouble, 
and with an hysterical desire to laugh interposed : — 

“Mr. Pole, this is Mr. Falkner, an old friend of ours !”’ 

“Oh,” Larry remarked, “I didn’t understand!” and 
he looked at Falkner again, still from a distance. 

“Rob,” Isabelle continued, turning to Falkner, “you 


272 TOGETHER 


didn’t tell me yesterday how Bessie is. I haven’t heard 
from her for a long while, — and Mildred ?”’ 

“They are well, I believe. Bessie doesn’t write often.” 

Pole followed him into the hall, making remarks. Isa- 
belle heard Falkner reply gruffly: ‘“‘ Yes, it was a nasty 
fall. But a kid can fall a good way without hurting himself 
seriously.” 

When Pole came back and began to talk to her, Isabelle’s 
sympathy for his wife revived. The house had settled 
into the dreary imitation of its customary routine that the 
house of suspense takes on. To live in this, with the mild 
irritation of Larry’s conversational fluency, was quite 
intolerable. It was not what he said, but the fact that he 
was forever saying it. ‘‘A bag of words,” Isabelle called 
him. ‘Poor Margaret!’’ And she concluded that there 
was nothing more useful for her to do than to take upon 
herself the burden of Larry until he should dispose of himself 
in some harmless way. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


No, women such as Margaret Pole do not ‘despise their 
husbands because they are unfortunate in money matters,” 
—not altogether because they prove themselves generally 
incompetent in the man’s struggle for life! This process 
of the petrification of a woman’s heart, slow or rapid as it 
may be, is always interesting, — if the woman is endowed in 
the first place with the power to feel. How Margaret Lawton 
may have come to marry Lawrence Pole, we can defer for 
the present, as a matter of post-mortem psychology, unprofit- 
able, melancholy, and inexact, however interesting. How 
does any woman come to marry any man? Poets, psy- 
chologists, and philosophers have failed to account for the 
accidents of this emotional nexus. 

What is determinable and more to our purpose is the 
subsequent process of dissolution, or petrifaction. All 
that need be said is that Margaret married her husband 
when she was twenty-four, with confidence, belief in him, 
and a spiritual aspiration concerning marriage not possible 
to many who marry. However foolishly she may have 
deluded herself, — betrayed a fatal incapacity to divine, — 
she believed when she went to the altar with Lawrence Pole 
that she was marrying a Man,— one whom she could respect as 
well as love, and to whom she should remain loyally bound in 
mind and heart and soul. 

She was ardent, this delicate Southern girl. Under a man- 
ner that had seemed to comrades at St. Mary’s cold because of 
its reticence, there burned the fire of a crusading race, — of 
those Southerners who had pushed from the fat lowlands , 
about the sea into the mountains and across them to the wil- 
derness; of that uncle, who after the defeat of his cause had 
ridden his cavalry horse across the entire country in search 

es 273 


274 TOGETHER 


of a new opening, to build at forty-three a new life for himself 
and his wife — after defeat! There was courage, aspiration, 
the power of deeds in that blood, — note the high forehead, 
the moulded chin, the deep eyes of this woman. And there 
was also in her religious faith, received from her father the 
Bishop, piety, and accepted beliefs in honor, loyalty, love 
to one’s family and friends, and charity to the world. All 
this was untested, handed down to her wrapped in the 
prayer-book by the Bishop. And she had seen a bit of 
what we call the world, there in Washington among her 
mother’s friends, — had been gay, perhaps reckless, played 
like a girl with love and life, those hours of sunshine. She 
knew vaguely that some men were liars, and some were 
carnal; but she came to her marriage virgin in soul as 
well as body, without a spot from living, without a vicious 
nerve in her bod'y, ready to learn. 

And folly with money, mere incompetence, did not turn 
that heart to stone, — not that alone. The small segment - 
of the world that knew the Poles might think so, hearing 
how Larry had gone into Wall Street and fatuously left there 
his own small fortune, and later, going back after his lesson, 
had lost what he could of his wife’s property. To be sure, 
after that first “ill luck,’’? Margaret’s eyes had opened to the 
fact that her husband was not “ practical,” was easily led 
by vanity. In the Lawton family it had been the Man’s 
part to deal effectively with practical life, and women did not 
concern themselves with their judgments. But as Margaret 
had never expected to be rich, — had no ambition for place 
in the social race, — she would have gone back to her blue- 
capped mountains and lived there contented, ‘‘ with something 
to look at.”’ She had urged this course upon her husband 
after the first disaster; but he was too vain to “get out,” to 
“quit the game,” to leave New York. So with the under- 
standing that henceforth he would stick to prosaic methods 
of money making, he had started again in his brokerage 
business. This was at the time when Margaret was occupied 
with her babies, As the indubitable clay of her idol revealed — 


TOGETHER 275 


itself, she had thought that child-bearing, child-having 
would be a tolerable compensation for her idyl. Margaret 
Pole was one who “‘ didn’t mind having babies,”’ and did not 
consider the fatal nine months a serious deprivation of life. 
She liked it all, she told Isabelle, and was completely happy 
only when the children were coming and while they were 
helpless babies. One real interest suffices for all. 

Then one day, after the second boy was born, Larry came 
in, shaking in hand and heart, and the miserable news was 
soon out, — “ caught in the panic,” “unexpected turn of the 
market.’ But how could he be caught, his wife demanded, 
with contracting blue eyes? Had his firm failed? And 
after a little, — lie and subterfuge within lie and subterfuge 
being unwrapped, —it appeared, — the fact. He had “ gone 
into cotton’’ — with whose money? His mother’s estate, — 
those excellent four per cent gold bonds that the thrifty 
judge had put aside for his widow! 

With the look that Margaret gave her husband, he might 
have seen that the process of petrifaction had set in, had 
gone far, indeed. 

Margaret loved her mother-in-law, — the sweet old woman 
of gentle fancies who lived in an old house in an old town 
on the Massachusetts coast, the town where she and the judge 
had grown up. An unworldly, gentle woman, who had 
somehow told her daughter-in-law without words that she 
knew what was missing in her woman’s heart. No, the 
judge’s widow should not pay for her son’s folly! So Mar- 
garet sold the New York house, which was hers, and also 
some of those mountain lands that had a growing value now, 
realizing bitterly that by this early sale she was sacrificing 
her boys’ heritage—the gift of her forefathers — for a 
miserable tithe of its real value, — just because their father 
was too weak to hold what others had given him; and hadn’t 
kept faith with her like a frank comrade. ... What was 
left she took into her own possession. 

So the Poles went abroad, after this. In doubt and 
distress, in sickness and divorce, what else does an American 


276 TOGETHER 


do? Margaret had one lingering hope for her husband. 
He had a good voice. At college it was considéred re- 
markable,—a clear, high tenor. He had done little 
with his gift except make social capital out of it. And he 
had some aptitude for acting. He had been a four years’ 
star in the college operas. If the judge had not belonged 
to the settled classes, Larry might have adorned a “‘ Broad- 
way show.” Instead, through his father’s influence, he 
had attempted finance—and remained an amateur, a 
“gentleman.” But now, Margaret said to herself, over 
there, away from trivial society, —the bungled business career 
ended, — Larry might turn to his gift seriously. He was 
only thirty-two, — not too old, with hard work and steady 
persistence, which she would supply, to achieve some- 
thing. For she would have been content to have him in the 
Broadway show; it mattered not to her now what he 
should do. And then she beguiled herself with the hope 
that some of that intellectual life, the interests in books, 
music, art — in ideas — could come to them in common, — 
a little of what she had dreamed the husband-and-wife life 
might be like. Thus with clear insight into her husband’s 
nature, with few illusions, but with tolerance and hope, 
Margaret betook herself to Munich and settled her family 
in a little villa on the outskirts, conformable to their income, 
— her income, which was all they had. But it mattered not 
what she had to live on; her mother had shown her how to 
make a little answer... . 

At first Larry liked this Munich life. It saved his 
vanity, and offered an easy solution for his catastrophe in 
cotton. He was the artist, not fitted for business, as his wife 
saw. He liked to go to concerts and opera, and take lessons, 
— but he had to learn German and he was lazy about that. 
Margaret studied German with him, until the little girl came. 
Then Larry was left to amuse himself, and did it. First he 
found some idle American students, and ran,ebout with 
them, and through them he fell in with a woman of the 
Stacia Conry type, of which there is always a supply in every 


TOGETHER 277 


agreeable European centre. . When Margaret emerged from 
her retirement and began to look about, she found this Eng- 
lishwoman very prominent on the horizon. Larry sang with 
her and drove with her and did the other things that he could 
not do with his wife. He was the kind of man who finds the 
nine months of his wife’s disability socially irksome, and 
amuses himself more or less innocently. 

Margaret understood. Whether Larry’s fondness for 
Mrs. Demarest was innocent or not, she did not care; she 
was surprised with herself to find that she had no jealousy 
whatever. Mrs. Demarest did not exist for her. This 
Mrs. Conry had a husband who.came to Munich after her 
and bore her back to London. When Larry proposed that 
they should spend the next season in London, his wife said 
calmly : — 

“You may if you like. Iam going to return to America.” 

“ And my work?” 

Margaret waved a hand ironically : — 

“You will be better alone... . My father is getting old 
and feeble; I must see him.” . . 

When the family sailed, Larry. was in the party. Mrs. 
Demarest had written hin the proper thing to write after 
such an intimacy, and Larry felt that he must ‘‘ get a job.” ... 

In those months of the coming of the little girl and the 
summer afterwards, the new Margaret had been born. It was 
a quiet woman, outwardly calm, inwardly thinking its way 
slowly to conclusions, — thoughts that would: have surprised 
the good Bishop. For when her heart had begun to grow 
cold in the process of petrifaction, there had awakened a 
new faculty,—her mind. She began to digest the world. 
Those little rules of life, the ones handed down with the 
prayer-book, having failed, she asked questions, — ‘ What is 
life? What is a woman’s life? What is my life? What 
is duty? A woman’s duty? My duty, married to 
ary?!) 68. 

And one by one with relentless clarity she stripped bare 
all those platitudinous precepts that she had inherited, had 


278 TOGETHER 


accepted, as one accepts the physical facts of the world. | 
When the untrained mind of a woman, driven in on itself 
by some spiritual bruise, begins to veach out for light, 
the end may be social Anarchy. Margaret read and under- 
stood French and German, and she had ample time to read. 
She saw modern plays that presented facts, naked and raw, 
and women’s lives from the inside, without regard to the 
moral convention. She perceived that she had a soul, an 
inner life of her own, apart from her husband, her children, 
her father, from all the world. That soul had. its own 
rights, — must be respected. What it might compel her to 
do in the years to come, was not yet clear. She waited, 
—growing. If it had not. been for her father, she would 
have been content to stay on in Europe as she was, reading, 
thinking, loving her children. 

On the way back to America, Larry, becoming conscious 
in the monotony of the voyage of his own insufficiency and 
failure, hinted that he was ready to accept the mountain 
home, which Margaret still retained, her mother’s old house. 
“We might try living in the country,” he suggested. But 
Margaret, focussing in one rapid image the picture of her 
husband always before her in the intimacy of a lonely country 
life, Larry disintegrating in small ways, shook her head 
firmly, giving as an excuse, “‘The children must have 
schools.” She would set him at some petty job in the city, 
anything to keep him from rotting completely. For he was 
the father of her children! 

The good old Bishop met them at the pier in New York. 
In spite of his hardened convictions about life, the little rule 
of thumb by which he lived, he knew something of men and 
women; and he suspected that process of petrifaction in his 
daughter’s heart. So he took occasion to say in their first 
intimate talk: — 

“Tam glad that you and Lawrence have decided to come 
home to live. It is not well for people to remain long away 
from their own country, to evade the responsibilities of our 
social brotherhood. The Church preaches the highest com- 


TOGETHER 279 


munism, . . . and you must help your husband to find some 
definite service in life, and do it.” | 

Margaret’s lips curved dangerously, and the Bishop, as if 
answering this sign, continued : — 

‘Lawrence does not show great power, I know, my dear. 
But he is a good man, — a faithful husband and a kind father. 
That is much, Margaret. It rests with you to make him 
more !”’ 

‘Does it?’ Margaret was asking herself behind her blank 
countenance. ‘One cannot make bricks without straw. .. . 
What is that sort of goodness worth in a man? I had 
rather my husband were what you call a bad man — and 
a Man.’ But she said nothing. 

“Thus our Lord has ordered it in this life,’ continued the 
Bishop, feeling that he was making headway; “that one 
who is weak is bound to one who is stronger, — perchance 
for the good of both.” 

Margaret smiled. 

‘‘And a good woman has always the comfort of her chil- 
dren,— when she has been blessed with them,—who will 
grow to fill the desolate places in her heart,’”’ concluded the 
good Bishop, feeling that he had irrefutably presented to his 
daughter the right ideas. But the daughter was thinking, 
with the new faculty that was awakening in her: — 

‘Do children fill the desolate spots in a woman’s heart com- 
pletely? I love mine, even if they are spotted with his 
weaknesses. I am a good mother, —I1 know that I am, 
— yet I could love, — oh, I could love grandly some one 
else, and love them more because of it! At’ thirty a 
woman is not done with loving, even though she has three 
children.’ 

But she did not dispute her father’s words, merely saying 
in a weary voice, “‘I suppose Larry and I will make a life 
of it, as most people do, somehow!” 

Nevertheless, as she spoke these words of endurance, there 
was welling up within her the spirit of rebellion against her 
lot, — the ordinary lot of acceptance. She had a conscious- 


280 TOGETHER 


ness of power in herself to live, to be something other than 
the prosaic animal that endures. — 


The Poles took the house at Dudley Farms and began 
the routine of American suburban life, forty miles from New 
York. After several months of futile effort, spaced by 
periods of laziness that Margaret put an end to, a gentle- 
man’s job was secured for Larry, through the kindness of 
one of his father’s friends. At first Larry was inclined to 
think that the work would belittle him, spoil his chances of 
‘better things.’”? But Margaret, seeing that as assistant 
secretary to the Malachite Company he could do no harm, 
could neither gamble nor loaf, replied to these doubts in a 
tone of cold irony: — 

“You can resign when you find something better suited 
to your talents.” 

Thus at thirty-five Larry was rangé and a commuter. He 
dressed well, kept up one of his clubs, talked the condition 
of the country, and was a kind father to his boys... . 
‘What more should a woman expect?’ Margaret asked her- 
self, thinking of her father’s words and enumerating her 
blessings. Three healthy children, a home and enough to 
eat and wear, a husband who (in spite of Conny’s gossip) 
neither drank to excess nor was unfaithful nor beat her, — 
who had none of the obvious vices of the male! Good God! 
Margaret sighed with a bitter sense of irony. 

‘“T must be a wicked woman,”’ her mother would have said 
under similar circumstances, — and there lies the change 
in woman’s attitude. 

Looking across the table at Larry in his neat evening 
clothes, — he was growing a trifle stout these days, — listen- 
ing to his observations on the railroad service, or his sugges- 
tion that she should pay more attention to dress, Margaret 
felt that some day she must shriek maniacally. But instead 
her heart grew still and cold, and her blue eyes icy. 

‘What is there in woman that makes trifles so important?” 
she asked Isabelle in a rare effusion of truth-speaking. “ Why 


TOGETHER 281 


do some voices — correct and well-bred ones — exasperate 
you, and others, no better, fill you with content, comfort? 
Why do little acts — the way a man holds a book or strokes 
his mustache — annoy you? Why are you dead and bored 
when you walk with one person, and are gay when you walk 
by yourself ?”’ 

To all of which Isabelle sagely replied: “You think too 
much, Margaret dear. As John says when I ask him pro- 
‘found questions, ‘Get up against something real!’”’ 

For Isabelle could be admirably wise where another was 
concerned. 

“Yes,” Margaret admitted, “I. suppose I am at fault. 

‘It is my job to make life worth living for all of us, — the 
Bishop, mother-in-law, children, Larry, — all but myself. 
That’s a woman’s privilege.” 
_ So she did her “job.”’ But within her the lassitude of 
dead things was ever growing, sapping her physical buoyancy, 
‘sapping her will. She called to her soul, and the weary 
spirit seemed to have withdrawn. 

“A case of low vitality,” in the medical jargon of the day. 
And hers was a vital stock, too. 

‘In time,’ she said, ‘I shall be dead, and then I shall ‘be 
a good woman, — wholly good! The Bishop will be con- 
tent.’ And she smiled in denial of her own words. For even 
then, at the lowest ebb, her soul spoke: there was wonder 
and joy and beauty somewhere in this gray procession of 
phenomena, and it must come to her sometime. And when 
it came, her heart said, she would grasp it! 


CHAPTER XXXIIT 


Turse days Larry Pole began to think well of himself 
once more. He had made his mistakes, —what man 
hasn’t ?— but he had wiped out the score, and he was fulfilling 
the office of under-secretary to the great Malachite Company 
admirably. He was conscious that the men in the office felt 
that his personality, his bearing, and associations gave dis- 
tinction to the place. And he still secretly looked for some 
turn in the game which would put him where he desired to 
be. In New York the game is always on, the tables always 
set: from the newsboy to the magnate ie gambler’s hope 
is open to every man. ‘ 

Only one thing disturbed his self- cota plAteneee aa Mard 
garet treated him indifferently, coldly. He even suspected 
that though by some accident she had borne him three chil- 
dren he had never won her love, that she had never been 
really his. Since their return from Europe and establishing 
themselves in the country, she had withdrawn more and more 
from him — where? Into herself. She had her own room 
and dressing-room, beyond the children’s quarters, in the 
rear of the rambling house, and her life seemed to go on in 
those rooms more and more. It was almost, Larry observed 
discontentedly, as if there were not a husband in the situation. 
Well, he reflected philosophically, women were like that, — 
American women; they thought they owned themselves 
even after they had married. If a wife took that attitude, 
she must not complain if the husband went his way, too. 
Larry in these injured moods felt vague possibilities of 
wickedness within him, — justified errancies. .. . 

One day he was to see deep into that privacy, to learn all 
—all he was capable of understanding — about his wife. 
Margaret had been to the city, — a rare event, — had lunched 

282 


TOGETHER 283 


with Isabelle, and gone to see a new actress in a clever little 
German play. She and Isabelle had talked it over, — very 
animatedly. Then she had brought back with her some new 
books and foreign reviews. After dinner she was lying on 
the great lounge before the fire, curled up in a soft dress of 
pale lilac, seriously absorbing an article on a Russian play- 
wright. Hers was a little face, — pale, thin, with sunken eyes. 
The brow was too high, and latterly Margaret paid no atten- 
tion to arranging her hair becomingly. It was not a face 
that could be called pretty; it would not be attractive to 
most men, her husband thought as he watched her. But 
it had drawn some men strongly, fired them; and Larry 
still longed for its smiles, — desired her. 

He had felt talkative that evening, had chattered all 
through dinner, and she had listened tolerantly, as she might 
to her younger boy when he had a great deal to say about 
nothing. But now she had taken refuge in this review, and 
Larry had dropped from sight. When he had finished his 
cigarette, he sat down on the edge of the lounge, taking her 
idle hand in his. She let him caress it, still reading on. 
After a time, as he continued to press the hand, his wife said 
without raising her eyes: — q 

“What do you want?” 

““What do you want?’” Larry mimicked! “Lord! you 
American women are as hard as stone.” ' 

“Are the others different?’’ Margaret asked, raising her 
eyes. 

“They say they are — how should I know?” 
| “T thought you might know from experience,’’ she observed 
— equably. 

“T have never loved any woman but you, Margaret!” 
he said.tenderly. “ You know that!” 

Margaret made no response. The statement seemed to 
demand something of her which she could not give. He 
took her hand again, caressed it, and finally kissed her. 

She looked at him steadily, coldly. 
| Please —sit over there!” As her husband continued to 


284 TOGETHER | 


caress her, she sat upright. “I want to say something to 


you, Larry.” 

“ What is it?” 

“There can’t be any more of that — you understand ? — 
between us.” 

‘What do you mean?” 

“T mean — that, what you call love, passion, is over 
between us.” 

“Why? ... what have I done?” 

Margaret waved her hand impatiently : — 


“It makes no difference, —I don’t want it—I can’t— _ 


that is all.’ 

“You refuse to be my wife?” 

“Yes, — that way.” 

“You take back your marriage vow?” (Larry was a high 
churchman, which fact had condoned much in the Bishop’s 
eyes.) 

“T take back — myself!” . 

Margaret’s eyes shone, but her voice was calm. 

“Tf you loved any other man — but you are as cold as 
ice!” 

f3 Am Wipe? 

“Yes! ... I have been faithful to you always,” he 
observed by way of defence and accusation. 

Margaret rose from the couch, and looked down at her 
husband, almost compassionately. But when she spoke, 
her low voice shook with scorn: — 

“That is your affair, — I have never wanted to know. .. . 


You seem to pride yourself on that. Good God! if you were © 


more of a man, — if you were man enough to want anything, 
even sin, — I might love you!” 

It was like a bolt of white fire from the clear heavens. 
Her husband gasped, scarcely comprehending the words. 

“T don’t believe you know what you are saying. Some- 
thing has upset you. ... Would you like me to love 
another woman? That’s a pretty idea for a wife to ad- 
vance |” 


TOGETHER 285 


“T want you to — oh, what’s the use of talking about it, 
Larry? You know what I mean — what I think, what I have 
felt — for a long time, even before little Elsa came. How can 
you want love with a woman who feels towards you as I do?” 

“Tt is natural enough for a man who cares for his wife —”’ 

“Too natural,’ Margaret laughed bitterly. “No, Larry; 
that’s all over! You can do as you like, —I shan’t ask 
questions. And we shall get on very well, like this.” 

“This comes of the rotten books you read!’’ he fumed. 

“T do my own thinking.” 

“Suppose I don’t want the freedom you hand out so 
readily ?”? he asked with an appealing note. “Suppose I 
still love you, my wife? have always loved you! You 
married me. ... I’ve been unfortunate —”’ 

“Tt isn’t that, you know! It isn’t the money — the fact 
that you would have beggared your mother — not quite that. 
It’s everything — you! Why go into it? I don’t blame 
you, Larry. But I know you now, and I don’t love you — 
that is all.” 
~ “You knew me when you married me. Why did you 
marry me?” 

“Why WAY did I marry you?” é 

Margaret’ s voice had the habit of growing lower and stiller 
as passion touched her heart. “ Yes— you may well ask 
that! Why does a woman see those things she wants to 
see in a man, and is blind to what she might see! ... Oh, 
why does any woman marry, my husband ?”’ 

And in the silence that followed they were both thinking 
of those days in Washington, eight years before, when ‘hae 
had met. He was acting as secretary to some great man 
then, and was flashing in the pleasant light of youth, popu- 
larity, social approbation. He had “won out” against the 
Englishman, Hollenby, — why, he had never exactly known. 

Margaret was thinking of that why, as a woman does think 
at times for long years afterwards, trying to solve the 
psychological puzzle of her foolish youth! Hollenby was 
certainly the abler man, as well as the more brilliant pros- 





286 TOGETHER 


pect. And there were others who had loved her, and whom 
even as a girl she had wit enough to value.... A girl’s 
choice, when her heart speaks, as the novelists say, is a curious 
process, compounded of an infinite number of subtle ele- 
ments, —suggestions, traits of character, and above all tempo- 
rary atmospheric conditions of mind. It is a marvel if it 
ever can be resolved into its elements! ... The English- 
man —she was almost‘ his — had lost her because once 
he had betrayed to the girl the brute. One frightened glimpse 
of the animal in his nature had been enough. And in the 
rebound from this chance perception of man as brute, she 
had listened to Lawrence Pole, because he seemed to her 
all that the other was not, — high-souled, poetic, restrained, 
tender, — all the ideals. With him life would be a com- 
munion of lovely and lovable things. He would secure some 
place in the diplomatic service abroad, and they would live 
on the heights, with art, ideas, beauty... . 

“Wasn’t I a fool —not to know!” she remarked aloud. 
She was thinking, with the tolerance of mature womanhood: 
‘T could have tamed the brute in the other one. At least he 
wasaman!’ “ Well,we dream our dreams, sentimental little 

girls that we are! And after a time we open our eyes like 
ittens on life. I have opened mine, Larry, — very wide 
open. There isn’t a sentimental chord in my being that you 
can twang any longer. ... But we can be good-tempered 
and sensible about it. Run along now and have your cigar, 


or go over to the country club and find some one to play | 


billiards, — only let me finish what you are pleased to call 
my rotten reading, —it is so amusing !”’ 

She had descended from the crest of her passion, and could 
play with the situation. But her husband, realizing in some 
small way the significance of these words they had exchanged, 
still probed the ground: — 

“If you feel like that, why do you still live with me? 
Why do you consent to bear my name?” 

The pomposity of the last words roused a wicked gleam 
in his wife’s eyes. She looked up from her article again. 


TOGETHER 287 


: “Perhaps I shan’t always ‘consent to bear your name,’ 
Larry. I’m still thinking, and I haven’t thought it all out 
yet. When I do, I may give up your name, — go away. 
Meanwhile I think we get:on very well: I make a com- 
fortable home for you; you have your children, — and they 
are well brought up. Ihave kept you trying to toe the mark, 

too. Take it all in all, I haven’t been a bad wife, —if we are 

_ to present references ?”’ 

“No,” Larry admitted generously; “I have always said 
you were too good for me, — too fine.”’ 
“And so, still being a good wife, I have decided to take 

_ myself back.” She drew her small body together, clasping 

her arms about the review. “My body and my soul, — what 

is personally most mine. But I will serve you — make you 
comfortable. And after a time you won’t mind, and you 
will see that it was best.”’ 

_ “Tt goes deeper than that,”’ her husband protested, grop- 

ing for the idea that he caught imperfectly; “it means 

practically that we are living under the same roof but aren’t 
married !”’ | 

“With perfect respectability, Larry, which is more than is 
always the case when a man and a woman live under the 
same roof, either married or unmarried! ... I am afraid 
that is it in plain words. But I will do my best to make it 
tolerable for you.” 

“Perhaps some day you’ll find a man, — what then?” 

Margaret looked at him for a long minute before replying. 

“And if I should find a Man, God alone knows what would 
happen!” ; 

Then in reply to the frightened look on her husband’s 
face, she added lightly : — 

“Don’t worry, Larry! No immediate scandal. I haven’t 
any one in view, and living as I do it isn’t likely that I shall 
_ be tempted by some knightly or idiotic man, who wants to 
Tun away with a middle-aged woman and three children. 
' I am anchored safely —at any rate as long as dad lives 
and your mother, and the children need my good name. 





288 TOGETHER 


Oh!” she broke off suddenly; “don’t let us talk any more 
about itl?)..n. 

Leaning her head on her hands, she looked into the fire, 
and murmured to herself as if she had forgotten Larry’s 
presence : — 

“God! why are we so blind, so blind, — and our feet caught 
in the net of life before we know what is in our souls!” 

For she realized that when she said she was middle-aged 
and anchored, it was but the surface truth. At thirty, with 
three children, she was more the woman, more capable of 
love, passion, understanding, devotion — more capable 
of giving herself wholly and greatly to a mate — than any 
girl could be. The well of life still poured its flood into her! 
Her husband could never know that agony of longing, those 
arms stretched out to— what? When would this torture 
of defeated capacity be ended — when had God set the term 
for her to suffer! 

In the black silence that had fallen between them, Pole 
betook himself to the club, as his wife had suggested, for the 


consolation of billiards and talk among sensible folk, ‘who . 


didn’t take life so damned hard.”’ In the intervals of these 
distractions his mind would revert to what had passed be- 
tween him and his wife that evening. Margaret’s last re- 
marks comforted him somewhat. Nothing of a scandalous 
or public demonstration of her feeling about her marriage 
was imminent. Nevertheless, his pride was hurt. In spite 
of the fact that he had suspected for a long time that his 
wife was cold, — was not “ won,”’ — he had hitherto travelled 
along in complacent egotism. “They were a fairly happy 
couple” or “they geed as well as most,’’ as he would have 
expressed it. He had not suspected that Margaret might 
feel the need of more than that. To-night he had heard and 
understood the truth, —and it was a blow.» Deep down in his 
masculine heart he felt that he had been unjustly put in the 
wrong, somehow. No woman had the right — no wife — to 
say without cause that having thought better of the marriage 
bargain she had “taken herself back.” There was something 


\ 


a 


TOGETHER 289 


preposterous in the idea. It was due to the modern fad of 
a woman’s reading all sorts of stuff, when her mind was 
inflammable. He recognized that his wife was the more 
important, the stronger person of the two, — that was the 
trouble with American women (Larry always made national 
generalizations when he wished to express a personal truth) 
—they knew when they were strong, — felt their oats. They 
needed to be “tamed.’’ 

But Larry was aware that he was not fitted for the task 
of woman-tamer, and moreover it should have been begun 
long before this. 

So having won his game of billiards Larry had a drink, 
which made him even more philosophical. ‘ Margaret is 
all right,”’ he said to himself: ‘She was strung up to-night, 
— something made her go loose. But she’ll come around, — 
she’ll never do the other thing!”’ Yet in spite of a second 
whiskey and soda before starting for home, he was not 
absolutely convinced of this last statement. 

What makes a man like Larry Pole content to remain 
the master of the fort merely in name, when the woman has 
escaped him in spiyit? Why will such men as he live on for 
years, aye and get children, with women, who do not even 
pretend to love them? 


Meanwhile the wife sat there before the fire, her reading 
forgotten, thinking, thinking. She had said more than 
she herself knew to be in her heart. For one lives on mo- 
notonously, from day to day, unresolved, and then on occa- 
sion there flame forth unsuspected ideas, resolves. For the 
soul has not been idle. ... It was true that their marriage 
was at an end. And it was not because of her husband’s 
failures, his follies, —not the money mistakes. It was 
himself, — the petty nature he revealed in every act. For 
women like Margaret Pole can endure vice and folly and 
disappointment, but not a petty, trivial, chattering biped 
that masquerades as Man. 


U 





CHAPTER XXXIV 


In the weeks that followed the accident Margaret Pole 
saw much of Falkner. The engineer would come up the 
hill to the old house late in the afternoon after his work, or 
ride up on his bicycle in the morning on his way to the 
dam he was building. Ned — “the Little Man” as Falkner 
called him — came to expect this daily visit as one of his 
invalid rights. Several times Falkner stayed to dinner; 
but he bored Larry, who called him “a Western bounder,”’ 
and grumbled, “He hasn't anything to say for himself.” 
It was true that Falkner developed chronic dumbness in | 
Larry’s conversational presence. But Margaret seemed to 
like the “bounder.’’ She discovered that he carried in his 
pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job 
these days with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not 
ordinary, as she remarked to her husband... . 

Falkner’s was one of those commonplace figures to be seen 
by the thousands in an American city. He dressed neither 
well nor ill, as if long ago the question of appearances had 
ceased to interest him, and he bought what was necessary for — 
decency in the nearest shop. His manners, though brusque, — 
indicated that he had always been within that vague line © 
which marks off the modern “gentleman.”’ His face, largely ~ 
covered by beard and mustache, was pale and thoughtful, and ~ 
his eyes were tired, usually dull. He was merely one of the 
undistinguished units in the industrial army. Obviously he © 
had not “ arrived,’’ had not pushed into the circle of power. ~ 
Some lack of energy, or natal unfitness for the present — 
’ environment? Or was he inhibited by a twist of fate, need- 
ing an incentive, a spur? 

At any rate the day when Margaret met him, the day 
when he had brought her boy home in his arms, the book 

290 





TOGETHER 291 


of life seemed closed and fastened for him forever. The 
fellow-units in the industrial scheme in which he had become 
fixed, might say of him, — “Yes, a good fellow, steady, 
intelligent, but lacks push, — he’ll never get there.’’ Such 
are the trite summaries of manamong men. Of all the inner 
territory of the man’s soul, which had resolved him in its 
history to what he was, had left him this negative unit of 
life, his fellows were ignorant, as man must be of man. 
They saw the Result, and in the rough arithmetic of life 
results are all that count with most people. 

But the woman — Margaret, — possessing her own hidden 
territory of soul existence, had divined more, even in that 
first tragic moment, when he had borne her maimed child 
into the house and laid his burden tenderly on the lounge. 
As he came and went, telephoning, doing the little that 
could be done, she saw more than the commonplace figure, 
clothed in ready-made garments; more than the dull, bearded 
face, the strong, thin hands, the rumpled hair. Something 
out of that vast beyond which this stranger had in common 
with her had spoken through the husk, even then. . . . 

And it had not ended there, as it would have ended, had 
Falkner been the mere “bounder”’ Larry saw. It was 
Falkner to whom the mother first told the doctors’ decision 
about the boy. Certain days impress their atmosphere 
indelibly; they have being to them like persons, and 
through years the odor, the light, the sense of their few 
hours may be recalled as vividly as when they were lived. 
This May day the birds were twittering beside the veranda 
where Margaret was reading to the Little Man, when Falkner 
came up the drive. The long windows ofthe house were 
opened to admit the soft air, for it was already summer. 
Margaret was dressed in a black gown that relieved the 
pallor of her neck and face like the dark background of an 
old portrait. As the boy called, “There’s big Bob!” she 
looked up from her book and smiled. Yet in spite of the 
placid scene, the welcoming smile, Falkner knew that some- 
thing had happened,—something of moment. The three 


292 TOGETHER 


talked and the birds chattered; the haze of the gentle brood- 
ing day deepened. Far away above the feathery treetops, 
which did their best to hide the little houses, there was the 
blue line of sea, gleaming in the sun. It seemed to Falkner 
after the long day’s work the very spot of Peace, and yet 
in the woman’s controlled manner there was the something 
not peace. When Falkner rose to go, Margaret accom- 
panied him to the steps. 

“Tt’s like the South to-day, all this sun and windless air. 
You have never been in the South? Some days I ache for 
itv 

In the full light she seemed a slight, worn figure with a 
blanched face. 

“Bring me my puppy, please, Bob!” the child called 
from his couch. “ He’s in the garden.” 

Falkner searched among the flower-beds beneath the 
veranda and finally captured the fat puppy and carried 
him up to the boy, who hugged him as a girl would a doll, 
crooning to him. Margaret was still staring into space. 

‘What has happened?” Falkner asked. 

She looked at him out of her deep eyes, as if he might 
read there what had happened. They descended the steps 
and walked away from the house. : 

“He hears so quickly,” she explained; “I don’t want him 
to know yet.” 

So they kept on down the drive. 

“Dr. Rogers was here this morning. ... He brought 
two other doctors with him. ... There is no longer any 
doubt —it is paralysis of the lower limbs. He will never 
walk, they think.” 

They kept on down the drive, Falkner looking before him. 
He knew that the woman was not crying, would never 
betray her pain that watery way; but he could not bear to 
see the misery of those eyes. 


“My father the Bishop has written me. . . spiritual | 


consolation for Ned’s illness. Should I feel thankful for 
the chastening to my rebellious spirit administered to me 


Siwicckoie 


TOGETHER 293 


_ through my poor boy? Should I thank God for the lash 
of the whip on my stubborn back?” 

Falkner smiled. 

“My father the Bishop is a good man, a kind man in his 
way, yet he never considered my mother, — he lived his 
own life with his own God. ... It would surprise him if 
he knew what I thought about God, — his God, at least.”? . .. 

Falkner looked at her at last, and they stopped. After- 
wards he knew that he already loved Margaret Pole. He, 
too, had divined that the woman, stricken through her 
child, was essentially alone in the world, and in her hungry 
eyes lay the story of the same dreary road over which he 
had passed. And these two, defeated ones in the riotous 
world of circumstance, silently, instinctively held out hands 
across the void and looked at each other with closed lips. 

Among the trees the golden haze deepened, and the birds 
sang. Down below in the village sounded the deep throbs 
of an engine: the evening train had come from the city. 
It was the only disturbing note in the peace, the silence. 
The old house had caught the full western sun, and its dull 
red bricks glowed. On the veranda the small boy was still 
caressing the puppy. 

“Mother!”.a thin ‘voice sounded. Margaret started. 

“Good-by,” Falkner said. “I shall come to-morrow.” 

At the gate he met Pole, lightly swinging a neat green 
bag, his gloves in his hand. Larry stopped to talk, but 
Falkner, with a short, ‘“‘ Pleasant afternoon,’’ kept on. Some- 
how the sight of Pole made the thing he had just. learned 
all the worse. 

Thus it happened that in the space of a few weeks Mar- 
garet knew Falkner more intimately than Isabelle had ever 
known him or ever could know him. Two beings meeting 
in this illusive, glimmering world of ours may come to a 
ready knowledge of each other, as two travellers on a dark 
road, who have made the greater part of the stormy journey 
alone. It would be difficult to record the growth of that 
inner intimacy, —so much happening in wordless moments 


294 - TOGETHER 


or so much being bodied forth in little words that would be 
as meaningless as newspaper print. But these weeks of 
the child’s invalidism, there was growing within them an- 
other life that no one shared or would have understood. 
When Larry observed, “That bounder is always here,” 
Margaret did not seem to hear. Already the food that the 
“bounder”’ had given her parched self was too precious to 
lose. She had begun to live again the stifled memories, 
the life laid away, —to talk of her girlhood, of her Vir 
ginia hills, her people. 

And Falkner had told her something of those envied years in 
the Rockies, when he had lived in the world of open spaces 
and felt the thrill of life, but never a word of what had 
passed since he had left the cafions and the peaks. Some- 
times these days there was a gleam in his dark eyes, a smile 
on the bearded lips that indicated the reopening of the 
closed book once more. His fellow-units in the industrial 
world might not see it; but Margaret felt it. Here was a 
human being pressed into the service of the machine and 
held there, at pay, powerless to extract himself, sacrificed. 
And she saw what there was beneath the mistake; she felt 
the pioneer blood, like her own, close to the earth in its 
broad spaces, living under the sky in a new land. She 
saw the man that should be, that once was, that must be 
again! And in this world of their other selves, which had 
béen denied them, these two touched hands. They needed 
little explanation. 

Rarely Margaret spoke of her present life, and then with 
irony, as if an inner and unsentimental honesty compelled 
utterance:,“ You see,’’ she remarked once when her husband 
called her, “we dress for dinner because when we started 
in New York we belonged to the dining-out class. If we 
didn’t keep up the habit, we should lose our self-respect. 

My neck is thin and I don’t look well in evening 
dress. But that makes no matter. ... We have prayers 
on Sunday morning; religion is part of the substantial 
life.”’ . 


TOGETHER 295 


Conny had said once, hearing Margaret rail like this: 
“She ought to make a better bluff, or get out, — not guy 
old Larry like that ; it isn't decent, embarrasses one so. 
You can’t guy him, Oey i 

But Falkner understood how the acid of her daily life - 
eating into her had touched, at these times, a sensitive 
nerve and compelled such self-revelations. 


It was Falkner who first spoke to the Poles about Dr. 
Renault. In some way he had heard of the surgeon and 
learned of the wonderful things he had done. 

“ Anyhow it is worth while seeing him. It is best to 
try everything.” 

“Yes,” Margaret assented quickly; “I shall not give 
up — never !”’ 

Through a doctor whom he knew Falkner arranged the 
visit to the surgeon, who was difficult of access. And he 
went in the evening after the visit to learn the result. 

“He thinks there is a chance!” and Margaret added more 
slowly: “It is a great risk. I supposed it must be so.” 

“You will take it?” 

“JT think,” she said slowly, “that Ned would want me 
to. You see he is like me. It may accomplish nothing, 
Dr. Renault said. It may be partially successful... . Or 
it may be—fatal. He was very kind,—spent all the 
afternoon here. I liked him immensely; he was so direct?’ 

“When will it be?” 

“Next week.” ! 

The operation took place, and was not fatal. “Now 
we shall have to wait,’ the surgeon said to the mother, — 
“and hope! It will be months before we shall know finally 
what is the result.’ 

“T shall wait and hope!” Margaret replied to him. Re- 
nault, who had a chord in common with this Southern 
woman, stroked her hand gently ashe left. ‘“ Better take the 
little chap away somewhere and get a change yourself,’ he 
said. 


296 TOGETHER 


It was a still, hot night of late June, the last time that 
Falkner climbed the hill to the old place. The summer, 
long delayed, had burst these last days with scorching fury. 
Margaret was to leave on the morrow for Bedmouth, where 
she would spend the summer with old Mrs. Pole. She was 
lying on the veranda couch. She smiled as Falkner drew 
a chair to her side, the frank smile from the deep blue eyes, 
that she gave only to her children and to him, and there 
Was a joyous note in her voice: — 

“At last there is a sign. I have a little more hope now! 

She told him of the first faint indications of life in the 
still limbs of the child. 

“Tt will be months before we can tell really. But to- 
night I have strong hope!” 

‘What we need most in life is hope,” he mused. “It 
keeps the thing going.’ 

“As long as a man can work, he has hope, 
stoutly. 

‘““T suppose so, — at least he must think so.” 

Margaret knew that the work the engineer was engaged 
on was nearly finished. It might last at the most another 
six weeks, and he did not know where he should go then; 
but it was altogether unlikely that the fall would find him 
at Dudley Farms. 

“T was in the city to-day,” he said after a time, “and 
in the company’s office I ran across my old chief. He’s 
going to Panama in the fall.” ... 

Margaret waited with strange expectancy for what Falkner 
might say next. She rarely asked questions, sought directly 
to know. She had the power of patience, and an unconscious 
belief that life shaped itself largely without the help of 
speech. Here and there in the drama of events the spoken 
word might be called for — but rarely. 

“They have interesting problems down there,” Falkner 
continued; “it is really big work, you know. A man nen 
do something worth while. But it is a hole!” 

She still waited, and what she expected came: — 


) 


she replied 


re 


TOGETHER 297 


“He asked me to go with him, — promised me charge 
of one of the dams, my own work, —it is the biggest 
thing that ever came my way.” 

And then the word fell from her almost without her will: — 

“You must go! Must go!” 

“Yes,” he mused on; “I thought so. There was a time 
when it would have made me crazy, such a chance... . 
It’s odd after all these years, when I thought I was dead —”’ 

“Don’t say dead!” 

“Well, rutted deep in the mire, then, — that this should 
happen.” 

She had said “go,” with all the truth of her nature. 
It was the thing for him to do. But she did not. have 
the strength to say another word. In the moment she had 
seen with blinding clearness all that this man meant in 
her little firmament. ‘This was a Man!’ She knew him. 
She loved him! yes, she loved him, thank God! And now 
he must go out of her life as suddenly as he had come 
into it, —must leave her alone, stranded as before in the 
dark. 

“Tt isn’t so easy to decide,” Falkner continued. “There 
isn’t much money in it, — not for the under men, you know.” 

“What difference does that make!” she flashed. 

“Not to me,”’ he explained, and there was a pause. ‘“ But 
I have my wife and child to think of. I need all the money 
I can earn.” : 

It was the first time any reference had been made to his 
family. After a time Margaret said: — 

“But they pay fair salaries, and any woman would rather 
be pinched and have her husband in the front ranks — 
And then she hesitated, something in Falkner’s eyes troub- 
ling her. 

“T shall not decide just yet. . . . The offer has stirred my 
blood, — I feel that I have some youth left!” 

They said little more. Margaret walked with him down 
the avenue. In her summer dress she looked wasted, in- 
finitely fragile. 


298 | TOGETHER 


‘“This@s not good-by,”’ he said at last. “I shall go down the 
coast in a boat for a week, as I used to do when I was a boy, 
and my sister has a cottage at Lancaster. That is not far 
from Bedmouth?”’ 

“No, it isn’t far,’ she answered softly. 

They paused and then walked back, as if all was not 
said yet. 

“There is another reason,” Falkner exclaimed abruptly, 

“why I did not wish to go — and you must know it.” 

She raised her head and looked at him, murmuring, — 

~ wes tel know sit! we. 4), 3But nothing should keep you 
here.” 

“No, not keep me. ... Butthere is sometpiine infinitely 


precious to lose by going. ... You have made me live 
again, Margaret. I was dead, dead, —a dead soul.” 
“We were both dead . . . and now we live!” 


“Tt were better not said, perhaps — ”’ 

“No!” she interrupted passionately. “It ought to be 
said! Why not?” 

“There can be nothing for us,’’ he muttered dully. 

“No!” and her hands touched his. ‘“ Don’t say that! 
We are both in the world, — don’t you see?” 

His face drew near to hers, they kissed, and she clung to 
him for the moment, then whispered: ‘Now go! You 
must live, live, — live greatly, —for us both!” 

Margaret fled to her room, knelt down beside the boy’s 
bed, with clasped hands, her eyes shining down on the 
sleeping child, a smile on her face. 





'\ 


ri 


CHAPTER XXXV 


CorNELIA Woodyard’s expression was not pleasant when 
‘she was deliberating or in perplexity. Her broad brow 
wrinkled, and her mouth drew down at the corners, adding 
a number of years to her face. She did not allow this con- 
dition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her “ heavy 
thinking,” as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the 
early morning hours of privacy. This languid spring day 
‘while Conny turned over her mail that lay strewn in dis- 
order on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst 
fits of dubitation. She poked about in the mass of letters, 
bills, and newspapers until she found the sheet she was 
looking for,—it was in her husband’s handwriting, — 
reread it, the scowl deepening, pushed it back thoughtfully 
into its envelope, and rang for the maid that looked after 
her personally as well as performed other offices in the well- 
organized household. When Conny emerged at the end 
of the hour in street costume, the frown had disappeared, 
but her fair face wore a preoccupied air. 

“Hello, Tom!”’ she said wanly to Cairy, who was dawdling 
over the paper in the library. “ How is it out?” 

“Warm, —a perfect day!’’ Cairy replied, smiling at her 
and jumping to his feet. 

“Ts the cab there?” 

“Yes, — shall we start?” 

“T can’t go to-day, Tom, — something has turned up.” _ 

“Something has turned up?” he queried. He was an 
expert in Conny’s moods, but he had seen little of this mood 
lately. ; ts 

“ Business,”’ Conn 
please. I may wantit... . 






lained shortly. “Leave the cab, 
No,” she added as Cairy came 


300 TOGETHER 


towards her with a question on his lips. “I can’t bother to ° 
explain, — but it’s important. We must give up our day.” 

She turned to her desk, and then remarked as if she felt 
Cairy’s disappointment: “ You can come in after dinner 
if you like, Tom! We can have the evening, perhaps.” 

He looked at her questioningly, as if he would insist on 
an explanation. But Conny was not one of whom even 
a lover would demand explanations when she was in this 
mood. 

“We can’t always play, Tommy!”’ she sighed. 

But after he had left the room she called him back. 

“You didn’t kiss me,” she said sweetly. “You may if - 
you like, just once. ... There!” she raised her head | 
and smiled at Cairy, with that satisfaction which emotional — 
moments brought to her. “You had better get to 
work, too. You can’t have been of much use to Gossom 
lately.’”? And she settled herself at her desk with the tele- 
phone book. As she called the hotel where Senator Thomas 
usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned 
to her brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with 
the problems suggested by Percy’s letter of the morning. 
But by the time she had succeeded in getting the Senator, 
her voice was gentle and sweet... . 

... “Yes, at luncheon, — that will be very niee!”” And 
she hung up the receiver with an air of swift accomplish- 
ment. 


It is not necessary to go into what had passed. between 
Cornelia Woodyard and Cairy in the weeks that had elapsed 
since that day when Conny had been so anxious to get back 
to New York from the Poles’. It would gratify merely a 
vulgar curiosity. Suffice it to say that never before had 
Conny been so pleased with life or her own competent han- 
dling of her affairs in it. Up to thismmorning she felt that 
she had admirably fulfilled all claims w 
satisfied herself. Things had seemed “t 
- during this period. The troublesome” matter before the 







TOGETHER 30! 


Commission that had roused her husband’s conscience and 
fighting blood had gone over for the time. The Commission 
had reserved its decision, and the newspapers had gone off on 
a number of other scents of wrong-doing that seemed more 
odorously promising. Percy’s conscience had returned to 
its normal unsuspecting state, and he had been absorbed 
to an unwonted degree in private business of one sort or 
another. 

Meantime the Senator and Cornelia had had a number 
of little talks. The Senator had advised her about the 
reinvestment of her money, and all her small fortune was 
now placed in certain stocks and bonds of a paper company 
that “had great prospects in the near future,” as the Senator 
conservatively phrased it. Percy, naturally, had known 
about this, and though he was slightly troubled by the 
growing intimacy with the Senator, he was also flattered 
and trusted his wife’s judgment. “A shrewd business 
head,” the Senator said of Conny, and the Senator ought 
to know. “It is as easy to do business with her as with a 
man.” Which did not mean that Cornelia Woodyard had 
sold her husband to the Senator, — nothing as crude as that, 
but merely that she “knew the values” of this life. 

The Senator and Conny often talked of Percy, the promise 
he had shown, his ability and popularity among all kinds 
of men. “If he steers right now,” the Senator had said to 
his wife, “there is a great future ahead of Woodyard, and”’ 
—with a pleasant glance at Conny — “I have no doubt 
he will avoid false steps.”” The Senator thought that ‘Con- 
gress would be a mistake. So did Conny. “It takes luck 
or genius to survive the lower house,’’ the Senator said. 
They had talked of something in diplomacy, and now that 
the stocks and bonds of the paper-mill were to be so profit- 
able, they could afford to consider diplomacy. Moreover, 
the amiable Senator, who knew how to “keep in” with an 
aggressively moral administration at Washington without 
altogether giving up the pleasing habit of ‘good things,” 
promised to have Woodyard in mind “for the proper place.” . 


302 TOGETHER 


So Conny had dreamed her little dream, which among’ 
many other things included the splendor of a career in some 
European capital, where Conny had no doubt that she could 
properly shine, and she felt proud that she could do so much 
for Percy. The world, this one at any rate, was for the able, — 
— those who knew what to take from the table and how to 
take it. She was of those who had the instinct and the power. 
Then Percy’s letter: — _ 

... “Princhard came up to see me yesterday. From 
the facts he gave me | have no doubt at all what is the inner 
meaning of the Water Power bill. I shall get after Dillon 
[the chairman of the Commission] and find out what he 
means by delaying matters as he has. ... It looks also 
as though the Senator had some connection with this steal. 

I am sorrier than I can say that we have been so 
3 with him, and that you followed his advice about — 
your money. I may be down Sunday, and we will talk it 
over. Perhaps it is not too late to withdraw from that 
investment. It will make no difference, however, in my 
action here.” . . 

Simply according to Conny’s crisp version, “Percy has 
flown the track again!” 


After a pleasant little luncheon with the Senator, Conny — 
sent a telegram to her husband that she would meet him 
at the station on the arrival of a certain train from Albany 
that evening, adding the one word, “urgent,” which was 
a code word between them. Then she telephoned the office 
of The People’s, but Cairy was not there, and he had 
not returned when later in the afternoon she telephoned | 
again. | 

“Well,’’ she mused, a troubled expression on her: face, 
“perhaps it is just as well,—Tom might not be easy to 
manage.- He’s more exacting than Percy about some 
things.” So while the cab was waiting to take her to the 
station, she sat down at her desk and wrote a note, — a 
brief little note: — . 


ih 
’% 
>| 


TOGETHER 303 


“Dar Tom: I am just starting for the station to meet 
Percy. Something very important has come up, which for the 
present must change things for us all... . You know that 
we agreed the one thing we could not do would be to let our 
feelings interfere with our duties—to any one.... I 
don’t know when I can see you. But I will let you know 
soon. Good-by. OH 

“Give this to Mr. Cairy when he calls and tell him not 
to wait,’’ she said to the maid who opened the door for her. 
Conny did not believe in “writing foolish things to men,”’ 
and her letter of farewell had the brevity of telegraphic 
despatch. Nevertheless she sank into the corner of the cab 
wearily and closed her eyes on the brilliant street, which 
usually amused her as it would divert a child. “ He’ll know 
sometime!” she said to herself. ‘ He’ll understand or have 
to get along without understanding!” and her lips drew to- 
gether. It was a different world to-night from that of the 
day before; but unhappy as she was she had a subtle satis- 
faction in her willingness and her ability to meet it what- 
ever side it turned towards her. 

The train was a halfhour late, and as she paced the court 
slowly, she realized that Cairy had come to the house, — 
he was always prompt these days, — had received the note, 
and was walking away, reading it, — thinking what of her? 
Her lips tightened a trifle, as she glanced at the clock. “He 
will go to Isabelle’s,” she said to herself. ‘He likes Isa- 
belle.”’ She knew Cairy well enough to feel that the South- 
erner could not long endure a lonely world. And Conny 
had a tolerant nature; she did not despise him for going 
where he could find amusement and comfort; nor did she 
think his love less worth having. But she bit her lip as 
she repeated, “He will go to Isabelle.” If Percy wanted 
to know the extent of his wife’s devotion to their married 
life, their common imterests, he should have seen her at 
this moment. As the train drew in, she had already thought, 
“But he will come back — when it is possible.” 

She met her husband with a frank smile. 


304 TOGETHER 


“You'll have to take me somewhere to dinner,” she 
drawled. “There isn’t any at home, — besides I want to 
talk at once. Glad to see me?” 

When they were finally by themselves in a small private 
room of a restaurant where Conny loved to go with her 
husband, — “because it seems so naughty,’’? — she said in 
answer to his look of inquiry: “ Percy, I want you to take 
me away — to Europe, just for a few weeks!” 

Woodyard’s face reflected surprise and concern. 

“But, Con!’ he stammered. ; ; 

“Please, Percy!’’ She put her hand softly on his arm. 
“No matter what is in the way, —only for a few weeks!” 
and her eyes filled with tears, quite genuine tears, which 
dropped slowly to her pale face. ‘ Percy,’’ she murmured, 
“don’t you love me any longer?” . . 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


Ir was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy 
went to Isabelle. But not that evening — the blow was 
too hard and too little expected — nor on the whole more 
frequently than he had been in the habit of going during 
the winter. Isabelle interested him, — “her problem,’ as 
he called it; that is, given her husband and her circum- 
stances, how she would settle herself into New York, — how 
far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as 
intellectual and esthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained 
woman, who frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. 
It was Cairy, through Isabelle, much more than Lane, who 
decided on the house in that up-town cross street, on the 
“right” side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. 
It was in an excellent neighborhood, “just around the cor- 
ner’? from a number of houses where well-known people 
lived. In the same block the Gossoms had established 
themselves, on the profits of The People’s, and only two 
doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful nov- 
elist had housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian 
facade. Close by were the Rogerses, — he was a fashionable 
physician; the Hillary Peytons; the Dentons, — all people, 
according to Cairy, “one might know.” 

When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter 
of settling herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel’s illib- 
eral will. They might easily have had a house nearer “the 
Avenue,” instead of belonging to the polite poor-rich class 
two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort herself 
by the thought that even with the Colonel’s millions at their 
disposal they would have been “little people” in the New 
York scale of means. And the other thing, the “interest- 

x 305 


306 TOGETHER 


ing,” “right” society was much better worth while. “You — 


make your own life, —it isn’t made for you,” Cairy 
said. 

Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts 
régime, she was feeling almost well generally, and when 
she “went down,’ Dr. Potts was always there with the 
right drug to pull her up to the level. So she plunged into 


' 


“+ 


é 


tt 
\ 


the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting — 


it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not 
understand her perplexity about furnishing. What with 
the contents of two houses on hand, it seemed incompre- 
hensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep. 
But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso estab- 
lishment and of the St. Louis one as well. She was deter- 
mined that this time she should be right. With Cairy for 
guide and adviser she took to visiting the old furniture 
shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new 
house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip 
to Europe to see her brother, and she should complete 
her selection over there, although Cairy warned her that 
everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days 
would be “fake.’? Once launched on the sea of house- 
hold art, she found herself in a torturing maze. What was 
“right”? seemed to alter with marvellous rapidity; the sub- 
ject, she soon realized,-demanded a culture, an experience 
that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of 
the Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, 
who was making over the New York house, had visited 
Grafton and had ideas as to what could be done with the 
rambling old house without removing it bodily. “Tear down 
the barn — throw out a beautiful room here — terrace it — 
a formal garden there,’ etc. In the blue prints the old 
place was marvellously transformed. 

‘“Aren’t you doing too much, all at once?’’ Lane remon- 
strated in the mild way of husbands who have experienced 
nervous prostration with their wives. 

“Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should 


TOGETHER 307 


keep occupied reasonably, with things that really interest 
me. ... Besides I am only directing it all, you know.” 

And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went 
his way to his work, which demanded quite all his large 
energy. After all, women had to do just about so much, 
and find their limit themselves. 

Isabelle had learned to “look after herself,” as she phrased 
it, by which she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off 
when she ran down to Lakewood, electricity, — all the 
physical devices for keeping a nervous people in condition. 
It is a science, and it takes time, — but it is a duty, as Isa- 
belle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four 
now, and though the child was almost never on her hands, 
thanks to the excellent Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, 
had her place in her mother’s busy thoughts: what was the 
best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or a German 
governess next year, how she should dress, and in the dis- 
tance the right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to 
do her best for the little girl, and looked back on her own 
bringing up — even the St. Mary’s part of it — as distress- 
ingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be 
fitted ‘to make the most of life,’ which was what Isabelle 
felt that she herself was now beginning to do. 

So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, 
spending her new energy wisely, and though she was getting 
worn, it was only a month to the date she had set for sailing. 
Vickers had promised to meet her at, Genoa and take her 
into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could 
rest. As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband 
than ever, for he, too, was busy, ‘‘ with that railroad thing,’’ 
as she called the great Atlantic and Pacific. She made him 
buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he could 
get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had 
developed laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant 
for dinner with chance friends that were drifting continually’ 
through New York, and afterwards to the theatre, — “to 
see something lively,’’ as he put it, preferably Weber and 


308 | TOGETHER 


Fields’, or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not 
the right thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed 
when they were “‘settled.”” Meantime she went out more 
or less by herself, as the wives of busy men have to do. 

“Tt is so much better not to bring a yawning husband 
home at midnight,’’ she laughed to Cairy on one of these 
occasions when she had given him a seat down town in her 
eab. ‘‘ By the way, you haven’t spoken of Conny lately, — 
don’t you see her any more?”’ 

Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, 
impertinent questions. She carried them off with a lively 
good nature, but they irritated Cairy occasionally. | 

‘“‘T have been busy with my play,’ he replied shortly. 

As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those 
fits of intense occupation which came upon him in the 
intervals of his devotions. At such times he worked to 
better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when his 
thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his 
muse for his periods of neglect. The experience, hephiloso- 


phized, which had stored itself, was now finding vent, — _ 


the spiritual travail as well as the knowledge of life. A 
man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told Isabelle, — 
and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or 
waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him fromthe 
door, he had completed his new play, which had been hanging 
fire all winter, and he was convinced it was his best. ‘“ Yes, 
a man’s work, no matter what it may be, is God’s solace 
for living.’”? In response to which Isabelle mischievously 
remarked : — 

‘So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get 
her to tell me about it.” 

““Do you think she would tell you the truth?” 

ce No.”’ 

Isabelle, in spite of Cairy’s protestations about his work, 
was gratified with her discovery, as she called it. She had 
decided that Conny was “‘ a bad influence” on the Southerner ; 
that Cairy was simple and ingenuous, — “really a nice boy,” 


\ 


TOGETHER 





so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done 
to Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the 
phrase, ‘‘but I don’t trust her,” or ‘‘she is so selfish.’”’ She 
had made these comments to Margaret Pole, and Margaret 
had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the 
remark : — 

“‘Conny’s no more selfish than most of us women, — 
only her methods are more direct — and successful.” 

“That is cynical,’’ Isabelle retorted. ‘‘ Most of us women 
are not selfish; I am not!’’, 

And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very 
night : — 

“John, do you think I am selfish?” 

John answered this large question with a laugh and a 
pleasant compliment. 

“IT suppose Margaret means that I don’t go in for chari- 
ties, like that Mrs. Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her 
old Consumers’ League. Well, I had enough of that sort 
of thingin St. Louis. And I don’t believe it does any good; 
it is better to give money to those who know how to 
spend it. . . . Have you any poor relatives we could be 
good to, John? . . . Any cousins that ought to be sent to 
college, any old aunts pining for a trip to California?” 

‘“‘Lots of ’em, I suppose,’’ her husband responded amiably. 
“They turn up every now and then, and I do what I can 
for them. I believe I am sending two young women to 
college to fit themselves for teaching.” 

Lane was generous, though he had the successful man’s 
suspicion of all those who wanted help. He had no more 
formulated ideas about doing for others than his wife had. 
But when anything appealed to him, he gave and had a com- 
fortable sense that he was helping things along. 

Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret’s 
statement, felt convinced that she was doing her duty in 
life broadly, ‘‘in that station where Providence had called 


her.” She was sure that she was a good wife, a good daugh- 


ter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than 





310 TOGETHER 


these humdrum things, —she meant to be Somebody, 
she meant to live! ... 

When she found time to call at the Woodyards’, she saw 
that the house was closed, and the caretaker, who was routed 
out with difficulty, informed her that the master and mis- 
tress had sailed for Europe the week before. 

‘Very sudden,’ mused Isabelle. ‘I don’t see how 
Percy could get away.’ 

Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed 
already, however, and she thought as she drove up town 
that it was time for her to be going. The city was becoming 
hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs. 
Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss 
Butts and the little girl with her. John promised “to run 
over and get her’’ in September, if he could find time. Her 
little world was all arranged for, she reflected complacently. 
John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over 
Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were 
shaking into place in New York. 

Cairy sent her some roses when she sailed and was in the 
mob at the pier to bid her good-by. 

‘Perhaps I shall be over myself later on,” he said, ‘‘ to 
see if I can place the play.” 

“Oh, do!” Isabelle exclaimed. ‘And we’ll buy things. 
I am going to ruin John.” 

Lane smiled placidly, as one not easily ruined. When 
the visitors were driven down the gangway, Isabelle called 
to Cairy: — 

“Come on and go back in the tug with John!” 

So Cairy limped back. Isabelle was nervous and tired, 
and now that she was actually on the steamer felt sad at 
seeing accustomed people and things about to slip away. 
She wanted to hold on to them as long as possible. Pres- 
ently the hulking steamer was pulled out into the stream 
and headed for the sea. It was a hot June morning and 
through the haze the great buildings towered loftily. The 
long city raised a jagged sky-line of human immensity, and 


TOGETHER Pot 


the harbor swarmed with craft, — car ferries, and sailing 
vessels dropping down stream carefully to take the sea breeze, 
steamers lined with black figures, screeching tugs, and 
occasionally a gleaming yacht. The three stood together 
on the deck looking at the scene. 

“Tt always gives me the same old thrill,” Cairy said. 
‘“‘Coming or going, it makes no difference, — it is the biggest 
fact in the modern world.” 

‘“‘T love it!’ murmured Isabelle, her eyes fastened on the 
serried walls about the end of the island. “TI shall never 
forget when I saw it as a child, the first time. It was mys- 
tery, like a story-book then, and it has been the same ever 
since.” 3 

Lane. said nothing, but watched the city with smiling 
lips. To him the squat car ferries, the lighters, the dirty 
tramp steamers, the railroad yards across the river, as 
well as the lofty buildings of the long city — all the teem- 
ing life here at the mouth of the country — meant Traffic, 
the intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring 
city. He looked at it with a vista that reached from the 
Iowa town where he had first ‘‘railroaded it,” up through 
the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso, to his niche 
in the largest of these buildings, — all the busy years which 
he had spent dealing with men. 

Isabelle touched his arm. 

‘“‘T wish you were coming, too, John,” she said as the breeze 
struck in from the open sea. ‘‘Do you remember how we 
talked of going over when we were in Torso?” 

What a stretch of time there was between those first 
years of marriage and to-day! She would never have con- 
sidered in the Torso days that she could sail off like this 
alone with a maid and leave ber husband behind. 

“Oh, it will be only a few weeks, — you'll enjoy yourself,” 
he replied. He had been very good about her going over 
to join Vickers, made no objections to it this time. They 
were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older and 
saw more of life. 


312 TOGETHER 


¥ 
‘ 

“What is in the paper?” she asked idly, as her husband © 
rolled it up. 

‘“There’s a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,— 
nothing else!”’ 

“See, that must be the tug!” exclaimed Isabelle, pushing 
up her veil.to kiss her husband. ‘‘Good-by —I wish you 
were going, too — I shall miss you so — be sure you exer- 
cise and keep thin!” ... 

She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing 
tug and take places beside the pilot room, — her tall, square- 
shouldered husband, and the slighter man, leaning on a 
cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John waved his 
paper at her, — the one that had the “roast”’ about Percy 
Woodyard. She had meant to read that,—she might — 
see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the tug moved off, ~ 
both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck — 
to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her 
husband coming over her afresh. As she gazed back at the 
retreating tug there was also in her heart a warm feeling 
for Cairy. ‘Poor Tom!” she murmured without ‘knowing 
why. 

On this great ship, among the thousand or more first- 
class passengers, there were a goodly number of women ~ 
like her, leaving home and husband for a foreign trip. After ~ 
all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for husbands — 
and wives to have vacations from each other. There was 
no real reason why two people should stick pcre in an | 
endless daily intimacy because they were married. 

Thus the great city — the city of her ambitions — sank 
mistily on the horizon. 


nil ot ge 





Wane Moorhoe 
Pree an Ait 
ee hi % 
a a 
. May 


; 
a 
7 
| 
| 
| 








CHAPTER XXXVII 


Mrs. Poun’s house stood on the outskirts of the old town 
of Bedmouth, facing the narrow road that ran eastward 
to the Point. In the days of Mrs. Pole’s father the ships 
passing to and from Bedmouth on the river could be seen 
from the front windows. Now the wires of a trolley road 
disfigured the old street and cheap wooden houses cut off 
the view of the river. In the rear there was a small garden, 
sloping down to an inlet of the sea, from which could be 
seen Bedmouth-way the slender spires of two churches that 
rose among the drooping branches of the elms, and sea- 
ward the squat outline of a great summer hotel, bedecked 
with many flags. Inthe black mould of the old garden grew 
tall syringa bushes, lilacs, pampas grass, and a few tiger 
lilies, and over the crumbling brick walls hung dusty leaves 
of grapevines. When the gate at the bottom of the garden 
was open, there was a view of the inlet, bordered with 
marsh grass, and farther away a segment of the open sea, 
with the lighthouse on Goose Rock. 

Here the Judge’s wife had come to live when her husband 
died, forsaking Washington, which had grown “too busy 
for an old woman.” .. 

At the end of the garden, which was shaded by the high 
wall, Margaret sat, an uncut book on her knees, her eyes 
resting on the green marsh to be seen through the open 
door. Near by Ned in his little invalid chair was picking 
the mortar from the brick wall with a nail he had been able 
to reach. The two were often alone like this for hours, 
silent. 

‘“‘Mother,”’ the child said at last, as Margaret took up the 
book. 

315 


316 TOGETHER 


“What is it, Ned?” 

“Must I sit like this always, —forever and ever?” 

“JT hope not, dear. You must remember Dr. Renault 
said it would take patience.’’ 

‘But I have been patient.” 

“Yes, I know, dear!” 





“Tf I didn’t get any better, should I have to sit like this ~ 


always?” At last the question which she feared had come, ~ 


the child’s first doubt. It had been uncertain, the recovery 
of the lost power; at times it seemed as if there were no 


progress. The mother answered in her slow, deep voice:— ~ 


‘““Yes, dear; you would have to be patient always. But 
we are going to hope! ”’ 

‘‘Mother,”’ the child persisted, ‘‘ why does it have to be so?” 

And the mother answered steadily : — 

“TI don’t know, my boy. Nobody knows why.” 

Ned resumed his scratching at the wall, pondering this 
mystery of an inexplicable world. Presently there was a 
sound of oars beyond the wall, and the child exclaimed : — 

“There’s Big Bob! He said he’d take me for a row.” 

Falkner carried off the Little Man for his promised boat 
ride, leaving Margaret to cut the leaves of her book and 
to think. It was the week before, the end of August, 
that Falkner had put into Bedmouth in his small sloop. 
He was staying with his sister at Lancaster, only a short 
walk on the other side of the Point. Aftera few days more 
at the most he would have to turn back southwards, and 
then? ... She threw down her book and paced slowly 


i 


v 
f 
* 


. 


back and forth along the garden walk. As the sun sank low, ~ 


her mother-in-law appeared, a frail little lady, who looked 
gently into Margaret’s face. 


“T am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been — 


a very hot day.” 

“Ts it hot?” Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes 
with her hand to look out over the marsh. 

There was the sound of oars and a child’s laugh, loud and 
careless, just beyond the wall. ‘Look out!” Ned cried. 


as 


| 4 


TOGETHER pire 


“There, you’ve wet your feet!” The two women smiled. 
That boyish laugh was rare these days. 

When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for 
his supper, Margaret and Falkner strolled out of the garden 
beside the marsh to a rocky knoll that jutted into the sea. 
They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose roots 
were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight 
stillness steal across the marshes and the sea. There was 
no air and yet the ships out by Goose Island passed across 
the horizon, sails full set, as though moved by an unseen 
hand. 

They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times 
like these their intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to 
reveal without the aid of speech new levels of understanding. 

“TY had a letter this morning from Marvin,” Falkner re- 

marked at last. 
_ Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them. fall 
through her thin fingers, waiting for the expected word8. 

“It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth.” 

“The tenth?” 

“Yes, ...so I must go back soon and get ready.” 

The decision about Panama had been in the balance when 
Falkner left New York, she knew. Another opportunity 
of work in the States had come meanwhile; the decision had 
not been easy to make. When Falkner had written his wife, 
Bessie had replied: “You must do what seems best to 
you, as you have always done in the past. . . . Of course 
I cannot take the children to Panama.’’ And when Falkner 
had written of the other work nearer home, Bessie said: 
“I don’t care to make another move and settle in a new 
place. ... We seem to get on better like this. Go to 
Panama if you want to, and we will see when you get back.” 
So he had debated the matter with himself all the way 
up the coast. ... 

“When must you leave?”’ 

“To-morrow,” he answered slowly, and again they were 
silent. 


318 TOGETHER 


It was as she wished, as she had urged. The new work 
would reopen the man’s ambition, and that must be. 
Where a man’s work was concerned, nothing — nothing surely 
of any woman — should intervene. That was her feeling. 


- a a 


\ 


No woman’s pining or longing to fetter the man: clear the ~ 


decks for action! 

“To-morrow !”’ she murmured. She was smiling bravely, 
a smile that belied the tenseness within. Falkner picked 
the long spines from a pine branch, and arranged them 
methodically one by one ina row. They were not all alike, 


differing in minute characteristics of size and length and — 


color. Nature at her wholesale task of turning out these 
millions of needles varied the product infinitely. And so 
with human beings! 


They two were at peace together, their inner hunger ap- — 


peased, with a sustaining content in lite neither had ever 
known before. When they were together in this intimate 
silence, their spirits were freed from all bondage, free to rise, 
to leap upwards out of the encircling abysm of things. 
And this state of perfect meeting — spiritual equilibrium 
—mustend.... 

“To-morrow ?’”’ she repeated, raising her eyes and gazing 
far out to the sunlit sea. And her heart was saying, “To- 
morrow, and to-morrow, and the days thereafter, — and all 
empty of this!” 


“Tt is best so,’ he said. “It could not go on like : 


this !’’ 
“No! We are human, after all!’’ and smiling wanly she 


rose to return to the house. When they reached his boat, — 


Falkner took her hand,—a hand with finely tapering 
fingers, broad in the palm and oval, —a woman’s hand, 
firm to hold, gentle to caress. The fingers tightened about 
his slowly. He looked into the blue eyes; they were dry 
and shining. And in those shining eyes he read the same 
unspoken words of revolt that rose within his heart, — 
‘Why thus too late! too late! Why has life declared itself 


in ail its meaning —too late? Why were we caught by 


TOGETHER 319 


the mistakes of half knowledge, and then receive the 
revelation?’ The futile questions of human hearts. 

“ You will come to-night —after dinner?” Margaret asked. 
“Bring the boat. We will go to Lawlor’s Cove. I want to 
get away —from everything !”’ 

As she mounted the garden steps to the house, she heard 
the whirr of a motor in the street. It stopped in front of 
_ the house, and as Margaret waited she heard Mrs. Hillyer’s 
thin voice: “I am so sorry! Please tell Mrs. Pole that 
I came over from Lancaster to get her for dinner.’’ Pres- 
ently the motor whirled away in the direction of the great 
hotel, a cloud of dust following in its wake. Margaret stood 
for a moment watching the car disappear into the distance, 
thankful that she had escaped Mrs. Hillyer and her new 
motor just now. ... The sun, sinking into the Bedmouth 
elms across the green marshes, fell full and golden upon her 
face. It was still and hot and brooding, this sunset hour, 
like the silent reaches of her heart. But slowly a smile 
broke from her lips, and she raised her arms to the light. 
It had touched her, the Sun God! It had burned her with 
its heat, its life. She knew! And she was glad. Nothing 
could take its fire wholly from her. 

“To-night !” she murmured to herself. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


SHE had written him in that fierce honesty which spoke 
in every penstroke on the paper: — 

... “Yes, I love you! I am proud when I say it over 
to myself, when I see it written here. I want you to know 
just how it is with me and my husband. ... So our 
marriage was a mistake, one of the millions women make 
out of the girlish guess. Ignorance, blind ignorance of self 
and life! And my husband knows how it is between us. 
He knows that when the man comes to me whom I can love, 
I shall love him. ... The man has come.... When 
it is time, I shall go to him and tell him honestly what has 
happened. I hate the little, lying women, —those who are 
afraid. I am not afraid! But these last hours I will have 
my heart’s joy to myself,—we will draw a circle about 
ourselves.”’ .". . 

“As I kiss you, I love you with that spirit you have given 
me,’’ she said to Falkner. ‘That is right, and this is right. 
You have given me life, and thus I give it back to you.” .. . 

When they were alone beside the sea this last evening, 
Margaret said: ‘‘Dearest, you must know as I know, 
that nothing which we have had together is sin. JI would 
not yield even to you where I felt the right. To my father 
the Bishop, this would be Sin. To that dear old lady over 
there in Bedmouth, who suffered all her life from a bullying 
husband and from a selfish son, —and who is now too 
broken to think for herself, —it would be Sin, anything 
not suffering would be Sin! But I know!” She raised 
her head proudly from his arms. ‘I know within me that 
this is the rightest thing in all my life. When it came, I was 


sure that I should take it, and that it would save me from 


320 






TOGETHER 321 


worse than death. . It came... and we were strong 
enough to take it, thank God !” 

On the other side of the shingle rampart, which rose sheer 
behind them, the slow swells of the sea fell at distant inter- 
vals with salenit resonance, the only sound that broke the 
stillness of the night. This surge rising and falling on the 
land from out the great body of the sea was like a deep 


- voice in the woman’s soul, echoing her instinct of a reason 


beyond reasons that compelled. 

But the man, holding her close to him, his lips upon her 
lips, did not heed her hot words of justification. His was 
the hunger which took what satisfied it without debate. 

“Tt makes little difference, the right and the wrong, after 


_ to-night,’”’ he replied grimly, ‘‘in all the days to come. 


We have lived and we have loved, that is enough.’ 
‘“‘No, no, — we are not weak, blind fools!” she spoke on 


_ swiftly. “I will not have it so! I will not have you leave 


me to-night with the thought that some day you will feel 
that of me. You must understand — you must always 
remember through all the years of life—that I —the 
woman you love —am sinless, am pure.... I can go 
with your kisses upon my lips to my children, to little Ned, 
and hold them tight, and know that I am pure in the sight 
af Gothtss 3", | 

“T give them my life, my all, —I am giving them this, 
too. A woman’s heart is not filled with the love of children. 
A woman’s life is not closed at thirty-two! ... I have 
a soul —a life to be satisfied, — ah, dearest, a soul of my 
own to be filled, in order to give. Most men don’t know 


_ that a woman has a life of her own — apart from her children, 


from her husband, from all. It’s hers, hers, her very own!”’ 
she cried with a sob of joy and anguish. 

In these words escaped the essence of that creed which 
had taken the place of the Bishop’s teaching, — the creed 


_ that is breathed insensibly in the atmosphere of the age, — 


‘I, the woman, have asoul that is mine which has its rights, 


‘and what it bids me take, that I will take and hold!’ 


Y 


Me 


322 TOGETHER 


The man listened to the solemn rhythm of the sea pound- 
ing upon the rocky coast, and it spoke to him of fatality, 
of the surge of life striking blindly, carrying in its mighty 
srip the little human atoms. It had borne him up to the 
stars, and in a few hours it would roll him back, down into 
the gulf, from which no effort of his will could take him. 
With this hunger, which was his human birthright, he must 
labor on, unappeased. It was given him merely to know 
what would recreate living for him, what would make of 
the days joy instead of pain, and it was not to be his, except 
for this moment of time. 

“‘T think,” he said, “‘there is enough to suffer and endure. 
We will not quibble about the law. In the face of the gulf, 
why argue?’ and he took her once more in his arms, where 
she rested content. ; 

Lawlor’s Point was a little neck of earner curving inwards 
from the open sea, making a small harbor. On the land- 
ward side the still, salty marsh was fringed by evergreens 
that rose dark in the night Once it had been a farm, its 
few acres swept by the full Atlantic winds, its shore pounded 
by the rock drift of the coast. Within the shingle the waves 
had washed a sandy beach. ... Margaret knew the place 
years before, and they had found it to-night in the dark. 
The abandoned farm-house, windowless, loomed above them, 
desolate, forlorn, emitting an odor of the past from its damp 
rooms. About the old walnut tree where they had been 
sitting there grew in the long grass fleur-de-lys and myrtle. 

“Let us go nearer to the water!’’ Margaret exclaimed. 
‘“‘T want to hear its voice close to my ears. This place is 
musty with dead lives. Dead lives!” She laughed softly. 
‘““T was like them once, only I walked and spoke, instead 
of lying still in a grave. And then you found me, dearest, 
and touched me. I shall never be dead like that again.” 

And when they had picked their way over the rough 
shingle to the water, she said in another passionate outburst, 


as if nature dammed for a long time were pouring et 


forth in torrent: — 


se 





TOGETHER 323 


“Pain! Don’t say the word. Do you think that we 
can count the pain —ever? Now that we have lived? 
What is Pain against Being !”’ 

“A man’s thought, that!’’ he reflected, surprised by the 
piercing insight, the triumphant answer of the spirit to the 
backward dragging surge of circumstance. “A woman 
suffers — always more than a man.” 

Margaret, flinging up her head to the dark heaven, the 
deep guttural note of the sea in her ears, chanted low, 
“Some pain is tonic.... Though to-night we are to- 
gether, one and undivided —for the last time, the last 
time,’”’ she whispered, “yet I cannot feel the pain.” 

The man rebelled: — 

“The last time? ... But we are not ready, Margaret, 
—not yet!” 

““We should never be ready !”’ 

“We have had so little.”’ 

“Yes! So little — oh, so little of all the splendid chance 
of living.”’ ¢ 

The same thought lay between them. They had come 
but to the edge of experience, and beyond lay the vision of 
recreated life. Like souls that touched the confines of a new 
existence and turned back, so must they turn back to earth. 
So little! A few hours of meeting, a few spoken words, 
a few caresses, a few moments like this of mute understand- 
ing, out of all conscious time, and then nothing, — the 
blank ! 7 

There was something cowardly, thus to turn back at the 
edge of experience, incomplete and wistfully desirous. 
Yet the man would not ask her to venture on. What the 
woman would gladly give, he would not take as sacrifice. 
She understood. 

“Would it be easier?” she asked slowly, “if for a time 
we had all?” 

rT: Yes!” 

“Tf for a little while we left the world behind us and 
went away —to know —all?”’ 


394 TOGETHER 


““We should be happier then, always. ... But I can- 
not ask it.” 
“Tt would be better so,’ she whispered dreamily. “I 


will go!”’ 
Her hands clasped about him and her lips trembled. 
“We will take our life!”’ She smiled as the vision of joy 


—food for a lifetime — filled her heart. “For a few hours 
I will be yours, all yours.” 

Thus, there beside the grumbling sea, these two — full 
man and woman, having weighed the issues of this life, 
the complex threads of soul and body, obligation and right, 
willed that they would take to themselves out of all eternity 
a few days, a few nights, a few mornings and a few evenings, 
— entire hours to be theirs, from which must be born courage 
for the future. 


Old Mrs. Pole looked up at the sound of Margaret’s step. 
The younger woman’s face was pale, but still radiant with 
a complete joy. She patted the old lady’s cheek and glanced 
down at the magazine inher lap. Between these two there 
was a depth of unspoken sympathy. 

“Found a good story, mother dear?’’ Margaret asked. 

The gld woman’s lips trembled. Many times that evening 
she had resolved to speak to Margaret of something her 
heart ached over. For she had seen far these last days with 
those old eyes that had seen so much. She could divine the 
dead waste in her daughter-in-law’s heart, having lived with 
father and son, and out of the wisdom of suffering years 
endured she wished to speak to-night. But the deeper 
wisdom of age restrained her. | ; 

‘““Yes, my dear, —a very good story.” 

Each ache must find its own healing. 


| 





CHAPTER XXXIX 


Tue long train pulled slowly into the station of the little 
seaport town. It was late, as always at this turning-point 
of the season, when the summer population was changing 
its roost from sea to mountain dr from the north to the 
south shore. Falkner, glancing anxiously along the line 
of cars for a certain figure, said again to himself, ‘If she 
shouldn’t come —at the last moment!’ and ashamed of 
his doubt, replied, ‘She will, if humanly possible.’ ... 
At last his eye caught sight of Margaret as she stepped from 
the last car. She had seen him at the instant, and she 
‘smiled rapidly above the crowd, one of her fleeting smiles, 
like a ray of April sun. Another smile, he took her bag 
from the porter’s hand, and their meeting was over. It 
was not until they were seated at a table in a sheltered corner 
of the station restaurant that he spoke: — 

“The Swallow is waiting at the wharf. But we had best 
get something hot to eat here. We shall have a long sail.” 

He took charge, at once, and while he ordered the luncheon, 
she looked at the travellers swarming to their food. Once 
during the long ride she had thought, ‘‘If we were seen by 
some one!”’ and her face had burned at the miserable fear. 
Now looking at the passing faces, she had a fierce wish that 
she might be seen by all the world! To speak out, to act 
unashamed, —but not yet,—no; the time was not ripe. 
As her look returned to Falkner, who was dressed in yacht- 
ing flannels with a white sweater she smiled again: — 

“Tam so hungry !”’ 

“T am afraid it will be bad. However —”’ 

“Tt doesn’t matter. Nothing matters — to-day 

Neither of them, she reflected, cared for the detail of life, 

325 


1? 


326 TOGETHER 


for luxury, mere comfort. They had shed superfluity, un- 
like those around them, who lived for it. 

“Ts it all right ?”’ he asked as the waitress slung the dishes 
on the table. 

“Everything !’? and she added: “I can telephone Ned? 
I promised to speak to him every day.” 

“Of course !”’ 

“Now let us forget. . . What a lot of people there are 
in the world running about t is 

“We'll say good- ie to them all very soon,” he replied. 

Their spirits rose as they ate. It was festive and joyous, 
even this dirty country station. The September sun was 
shining brightly through the window, and a faint breeze 
came straying in, smelling of the salt water. She had given 
no thought to what they would do, to where they would go. 
She did not ask. It was good to trust all to him, just to 
step forth from the old maze into this dreamed existence, 
which somehow had been made true, where there was no 
need to take thought. She pushed away her ice untouched 
and began slowly to draw on her gloves. 

‘““ All the way here from Bedmouth I had a queer feeling 
that I was making a journey that I had made before, though 
I was never here in my life. And now it seems as if we 
had sat by this window some other day, —it is all so ex- 
pected !”’ she mused. And she thought how that morning 
when she got up, she had gone to her little girl, the baby 
Lilla, and kissed her. With her arms about the child she 
had felt again that her act was right and that some day 
when the little one was a woman she would know and 
understand. 

Her lips trembled, and then a slow smile suffused her jhoat 
bringing color, and leaning forward she murmured: — 

uy am so happy! ... As never before, so happy!” 

Their eyes met, and for the moment they were lost in 
- wonder, unconscious of the noisy room. . . 

With a familiarity of old knowledge, Paliner descended 
the winding streets to the water front. In this lower part 


TOGETHER 327 


of the town the dingy old houses had an air of ancient 
grandeur, and tall elms drooped dust-laden branches over 
the street. 

“Dear old place!”’ he exclaimed, memories reviving of 
his boyhood cruises. ‘“‘It was in ninety-one when I was 
here last. I never expected to put in here again.” 

The streets were empty, a noon stillness brooding in them. 
Margaret slipped her hand into his, the joy, the freedom, 
the sense of the open road sweeping over her afresh. ‘The 
world was already fading behind them. ... They came 
out upon the wharves, and threaded their way among the 
sagging gray buildings that smelt of salt fish, until the harbor 
water lapped at the piles beneath-their feet. 

“There’s the Swallow!’’ Falkner cried, pointing into the 
stream. 

They were soon aboard, and Margaret curled herself in 
the cockpit on a rug, while Falkner ran up the sails. Little 
waves were dancing across the harbor. ‘Taking the tiller, 

he crouched beside her and whispered : — | 

“Now we are off — to the islands of the blest !”’ 

It was all so in her dream, even to the white sail slowly 
filling before the breeze. They glided past hulking schooners 
lying idle with grimy sails all set, and from their decks above 
black-faced men looked down curiously at the white figure 
in the cockpit of the little sloop. Behind the schooners the 
wharves and the red brick warehouses, the elms and the 
white houses on the hill, the tall spires — all drew backwards 
into the westering sun. A low gray lighthouse came. into 
sight; the Swallow dipped and rose; and the _ breeze 
freshened as they entered the lower bay. A great ship 
was slowly rounding the point, bound outward, too, laboring 
into the deep —for what? For some noisy port beneath . 
the horizon. But for her the port of starlight and a man’s 
arm, — the world was wonderful, this day! Falkner raised 
his hand and pointed far away to the eastward where a 
shadow lay like a finger on the sea. 

“Our harbor is over there!” 


328 TOGETHER 


Away to the east, to the broad open ocean, it was fitting. 
they should speed, —they who had shaken themselves 
loose from the land. . . . 

She held the tiller when he rummaged below for a chart, 
and while she was there alone, a pot-bellied pleasure steamer, 
swarming with people, rolled past, shaking the Swallow with 
its wake. The people on the decks spied the sail-boat, 
raised glasses, looked down, and had their say. ‘A bit 
of the chattering world that is left,’ thought Margaret, 
‘like all the rest.’ And something joyful within cried: 
‘Not to-day! To-day I defy you. To-day I have escaped 
—Iamarebel. You can do nothing with me. Oh, to-day 
I am happy, happy, happy, —can you say that?’ Falkner 
came up from the cabin with his chart, and shading his 
eyes, swept the sea for the landmarks of their course. And 
the Swallow sped on out of the noisy to-day through a path 
of gold and blue to the radiant to-morrow. 

“See!”’ Falkner pointed back to the old seaport grown 
dim in the distance behind them. The sun was falling 
behind the steeples, and only the black smoke from engine 
and chimney marked the edge of the shore. Far away to 
the north opened a long reach of blue water and at the head 
of the bay green fields descending gently to the sea. The 
Swallow was a lonely dot in the open waters, dipping, rising, 
the sun on its white sail, —fleeing always. Falkner sat 
beside her, circling her shoulders with his arm, talking of 
the sea and the boat as if they had sailed for many days 
like this together and were familiar with all. His arm as 
it touched her said, ‘I love you!’ And his eyes resting 
on her face said, ‘But we are happy, together, you and 
I, —so strangely happy!’ 

What was left there behind —the city and the vessels, 
the land itself — was all the mirage of life, had never been 
lived by them. And this—the swaying, sweeping boat, 
a dot upon the ocean and they together, heart by heart, 
going outward to the sea and night — was all that was 
real. Could it be possible that they two would ever land 


TOGETHER 329 


again on that far shore of circumstance, hemmed in by 
petty and sorrowful thoughts? 

Yet across the dream came the thought of the Little Man, 
waiting behind there, and the woman knew that on the 
morrow after the morrow she should wake. For life is 
stronger than a single soul! ... 

To the west and north there were islands, long stretches 
of sea opening between their green shores, far up into the 
coast land. The wind freshened and died, until at last in 
the twilight with scarcely a ripple the Swallow floated into 
a sheltered cove on the outermost of all the islands. A 
forest of stiff little spruces covered the sea point, and behind 
this was a smooth green field, and above on the crest of the 
island a small white farm-house. 

“A man named Viney used to live there,” Falkner said, 
breaking a long silence. ‘Either he or some one else will 
take us in.”’ Margaret helped him anchor, furl the sails, 
and then they went ashore, pulling the tender far up on 
the shingle beech beside the lobster-pots. They crossed the 
field — it was nearly dark and the Swallow was a speck on the 
dark water beneath — and knocked at the white farm-house. 

“Tt is like what you knew must be so when you were 
a child,’ whispered Margaret. 

“But suppose they turn us away?” 

“Why, we’ll go back to the Swallow or sleep under the 
firs! But they won’t. There is a charm in all our doings 
this day, dearest.” 

The Vineys welcomed them, and gave them supper. 
Then Mr. Viney, divining that with these two wanderers 
a love matter was concerned, remarked suggestively : — 

‘“‘Maybe you’d like to go over to my son’s place to sleep. 
My son’s folks built a camp over there on the Pint. It’s 
a sightly spot, and they’ve gone back to the city. Here, 
Joe, you show ’em the path!” 

So in the starlight they threaded the spruce forest down 
by the sea, and found the “camp,” a wooden box, with 
a broad veranda hanging over the eastern cliff. 


330 TOGETHER 


“Yes!” exclaimed Margaret, taking now her woman’s 
place of command; “this is the very spot. We'll sleep here 
on the veranda. You can bring out the bedding. If we 
had ordered it all, we could not have discovered the perfect 
thing, like this!”’ 

The gray pathway of the ocean lay at their feet, and from 
the headlands up and down the coast, from distant islands, 
the lights began to call and answer each other. A cloud of 
smoke far eastward hung over a seagoing steamer. And 
throughout the little island, over the floor of the ocean, in 
the wood about them, there was perfect stillness, a cessation 
of all movement. 

“Peace! Such large and splendid peace!”’ Margaret 
murmured, as they stood gazing at the beauty of the coming 
night. Peace without and answering peace within. Surely 
they had come to the heart of solitude, removed from the 
tumultuous earth. 

‘“Come!”’ he whispered at her ear, and she slowly turned 
her face to him. 

‘“Now, [know!’’ she said triumphantly. “This has been 
sent to answer me, —all the glory and the wonder and the — 
peace of life, my dearest! I know it all. We have lived 
all our years with this vision in our hearts, and it has been 
given to us to have it at last.” 

And as they lay down beside each other she mur- 
mured : — 

“Peace that is above joy, —see the stars!” 

And there beneath the tranquil stars in the calm night 
came the ecstasy of union, transcending Fate and Sor- 
POWs sti 

Thus at the extreme verge of human experience these 
two realized that inner state of harmony, that equilibrium 
of spirit, towards which conscious beings strive blindly, 
and which sanctioning what man forbids gives reason to 
life. The spirit within them declared that it was best so 
to gain the heights, whether in the final sum of life it should 
lie as Sin or Glory. For this night, for these immediate 


TOGETHER 331 


hours, as man and woman they would rise to wider kingdoms 
of themselves than ever otherwise might be reached. 
Thus far to them had come revelation. 


In the morning Margaret would play housewife. Sending 
Falkner to the Vineys’ for the things needed, she cooked 
the meal while he swam out to the Swallow and made ready 
for the day’s sail. Whimsically she insisted on doing all 
without his help, and when he was ready, she served him 
before she would eat herself, — “Just as Mrs. Viney would 
her man.” 

Did she wish to show him that she was equal to the com- 
mon surface of living, —a comrade to do her part? Or, 
rather, was the act symbolical, — woman serving joyfully 
where she yields real mastery? The woman, so often 
capricious and disdainful, was submissive, as if she would 
say: ‘This manis my mate. I am forever his. It is 
my best joy to be through him myself.” 

And after the meal she insisted on completing the task 
by washing the dishes, putting all to rights in the camp; 
then mended a rent in his coat which he had got from a 
stumble in the dark the night before. He laughed, but her 
eyes shone. 

“Let me do as long as I can!.... There — wouldn’t 
you and I shed things! That’s the way to live, — to shed 
things.’’ As they passed the Vineys’ house on their way 
to the boat, Margaret observed: — 

“That would do very well for us, don’t you think? You 
could go lobstering, and I would have a garden. Can you 
milk a cow?’ She was picturing the mould for their lives. 

And all that day as they sailed among the islands, up 
thoroughfares, across the reaches of the sea, they played 
a little game of selecting the right cottage from the little 
white farm-houses dotted along the shores, and said, ‘‘We’d 
take this or that, and we’d do thus and so with it — and 
live this way!” Then they would laugh, and grow pensive, 
as if the land with its smoke wreaths had suddenly drifted 


332 TOGETHER 


past their eyes, reminding them of the future. ‘You are 
bound with invisible cords,’ a voice said. ‘You have 
escaped in fancy, but to-morrow you will find the world 
wagging its old way.’ But the woman knew that no 
matter what came, the morrow and all the morrows could 
never be again as her days once had been. For the subtle 
virtue of a great fulfilment is its power to alter the inner 
aspect of all things thereafter. Nothing could ever be the 
same to either of them. The stuff of their inner lives had 
been changed... . 

They sailed the day long in the full sun, which beat down 
with a memory of summer that already had departed. At 
noon they landed on a rocky islet, a mere clump of firs 
water bound, and after eating their luncheon they lay under 
the fragrant trees and talked long hours. 

“Tf this hadn’t been,” Falkner said with deep gratitude, 
“we should not have known each other.” 

She smiled back triumphantly. That was the truth she 
had divined the night he was to have left her. 

‘“‘No,”’ she assented, ‘‘ we should have been almost strangers 
and been dissatisfied always.” 

“And now nothing can come between us, not time nor 
circumstance, nor pain. Nothing! It is sealed for all 
time — our union.” 

“Our life together, which has been and will be forever.” 

None of the surface ways of life, no exchange of words, no 
companionship, could have created anything to resemble this 
inner union which had come about. The woman giving 
herself with full knowledge, the man possessing with full in- | 
sight,—this experience had made a spirit common to both, in 
which both might live apart from each other, so long as they 
could see with the spirit, — an existence new, deep, inner. 

So they talked of the life to be with perfect willingness, 
as two might who were to part soon for a long journey, which 
both would share intimately and real loneliness never seize 
them. 

“And beyond this luminous moment,” suggested the man, 


TOGETHER 333 


' —his the speculative imagination, — ‘‘there must lie other 


levels of intimacy, of comradeship. If we could go on into 


the years like this, why, the world would ever be new, — 
we should go deeper into the mysteries every day, discover- 
ing ourselves, creating ourselves !”’ 

The warm sunlight, the islands mirrored in the waveless 
sea, the aromatic breath of the spruce and fir, the salty 


scent of the tidal shore —this physical world in which’ 


they lay —and that other more remote physical world 


of men and cities —all, all was but the pictured drama 
of man’s inner life. As he lived, each day dying and re- 
created, with an atmosphere of the soul as subtly shifting 
as the atmosphere of the earth, so this wonderfui- panorama 
of his faded, dissolved, was made anew. For out of the pano- 
rama of sense man builds his tabernacle, and calls it life, 
but within the veil there lies hidden beneath a power, that 
ean unlock other worlds, — strange, beautiful worlds, like 


- the mazes of the firmament through which the earth pursues 


its way. And the tide ebbing past this islet to the sea, 
flowing fast outward into the deep, carried them in its silent 
depths out into the new, the mysterious places of the spirit. 

The sun sank, covering the islands and the sea with a rare 
amethystine glow deepening to a band of purple, like some 
old dyed cloth, then fading to pale green at the rim of the 
earth. There ensued a hush, a pause in life, that filled the 
air. ‘We are fading, we are withdrawing,’ whispered the 
elements. ‘Our hour is past, the riotous hour, the spring- 
time flood, the passionate will. And in our place the night 
will come and bring you peace.“ The sadness of change, 
the sense of something passing, of moments slipping away 
to eternity! ... 

“Tell me,” she said as they drifted back with the tide, 
“what is it?” 

“Only,” he answered, “the thought of waste, — that 
it should have come late, too late!” 

Proudly denying the flaw in the perfect image, she pro- 
tested : — 


304 TOGETHER 


“Not late, —the exact hour. Don’t you see that it — 


could never have been until now?. Neither of us was ready 
to understand until we had lived all the mistakes, suffered 
all. That is the law of the soul, —its great moments can 
neither be hastened nor delayed. All is appointed.” 

Her gentle voice touched his heart like a soothing hand, 

— ‘Accept — rejoice —be strong —it must be so! And 
it is good!’ 

“Dearest, we should have passed each. other in the dark, 
without knowing, earlier. You could not have seen me, 
the thing you love in me, nor J you, until we were stricken 
with the hunger. . .. It takes time to know this babbling 
life, to knoW svhat is real and what is counterfeit. Before 
or after, who knows how it might have been? This was 
the time for us to meet !”’ 

In these paths her eyes wer’ bright to see the way, her 
feet accustomed. So it was true. By what they had suf- 
fered, apart, by what they had tested and rejected, they 
had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of 
time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be 
accepted. No wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that 
which had been given. And resolved hearts for that to 
come. ... 

Slowly, with the mood of the day in her lingering feet, 
Margaret crossed the field towards the Vineys’ cottage, 
while Falkner stayed to make the Swallow ready for its 
homeward journey in the morning. Joe Viney rowed out 
to the boat with him. Nodding towards the slight figure 
on the path above, the fisherman observed simply : — 

‘““She ain’t strong: your wife?” 

With that dlemined face! He had thought her this 
day pure force. Later as he followed her slow steps to the 
camp, he said over the old man’s words, “She ain’t 
strong.”’ She lived behind her eyes in the land of will and 
spirit. And the man’s arms ached to take her frail body 
to him, and keep her safe in some island of resf. 


CHAPTER XL 


AFTER supper Margaret sat and talked with Mrs. Viney. 
The fisherman’s wife was a woman of fifty, with a dragging 
voice, a faint curiosity in her manner. Her iron-gray hair 
smoothed flat was tied in a little knot behind. Her hus- 
hand, a good ten years older, had the vitality of a young 
man compared with his wife. He was grizzled and squat, 
with thick red face and powerful shoulders. His eyes 
twinkled sharply under their fleshy lids; but he exhibited 
no outward curiosity over the two strangers who had dropped 
down on his island. 

“That woman!’’ Margaret exclaimed disgustedly to 
Falkner as they went back to the camp. 

“Our excellent hostess? What is the matter with her?” 

“‘She’s a whiner!’ Margaret replied hotly. ‘The woman 
is always the whiner, —it makes me despise my sex. What 
do you suppose she wants? She has a sister in Lawrence, 
Mass., and Lawrence, Mass., is her Paris! She wants her 
husband to give up this, all the life he’s known since he was 
a boy, and go to live in Lawrence, Mass., so that she can 
walk on brick sidewalks and look into shop windows. 
There’s an ideal for you, my dear!” MS 

Falkner laughed at her outburst. After all an ambition 
for Lawrence, Mass., was not criminal. 

“Oh, women! ... She wanted me to know that she 
had seen life, — knew a lady who had rings like mine, —the 
social instinct in women, —phew! And he smoked his 
pipe like an honest man and said not a word. He'll 
never die in Lawrence, Mass.”’ 

‘But it must be lonely for the poor thing here winters; 
their children have all gone to the city.” 

335 


336 TOGETHER 


“There are ten families at the other end of the island, 
if she must have some one to clack with.” 

‘‘Perhaps she doesn’t find the island society congenial,” 
Falkner suggested slyly. He had heard Margaret inveigh 
against certain less restricted societies. 

‘But the old man said, ‘ Winters are best of all — when 
it’s fierce outside, and there’s nothing but yourself to amuse 
‘yourself with!’ That’s the man. And he said: ‘I like 
the blows, too. I’ve been on the sea all my life, and I don’t 
know nothing about it to speak on.’ He has a sense of 
what it means, —all this greatness about him.” 

‘‘But her element, you forget, is Lawrence, Mass.’’ 

“The man has the imagination, if he is a man! If he is 
a man! Woman just tails on,—as I cling to you, 
dearest !”’ 

‘‘And sometimes I think you would want to take the 
lead, —to have your own little way.” 

“Yes, Llike my way, too! But the women who think they 
can strike out alone — live their own lives, as they say — 
are foolish. The wise women work through men, — ac- 
complish themselves in those they love. Isn’t that bigger 
than doing all the work yourself?” 

‘““Women create the necessity for man’s work.” 

“You know I don’t mean that! ... What is bliss is 
to make the way clear for the one you loved. ... I could 
do that! I’d set my little brain working to smooth away 
the immediate difficulties, those that hinder, the little things 
that stick in the way. Id clean the armor for my lord and 
bring him nourishing food.” 

“And point out the particular castle you would like him 
to capture for your dwelling?” 

““ Never! Ib he man were worth serving, he would mark 
his own game.” . . 

They had walked Ey the eastern point of the island, where 
nothing was to be seen but the wide sea. The wind had 
utterly fallen, leaving the surface of the water mottled 
with currents from beneath. Far away on the horizon some 


TOGETHER aod 


ships seemed to be sailing —they had wind out there — 
and their sails still shone in the twilight. About the cliff 
at their feet the tide ran in black circles. It was still, and 
the earth was warm and fragrant from the hot day. Mar- 
garet rested her head upon his arm and closed her eyes. 

“It has been too much for you,” he said, concerned. 

“No,” she murmured, ‘‘I am not tired. This is content, 
at the day’s end. It is marvellous,’’ —she opened her 
eyes again upon him with a smile of wonder. “I haven’t 
had a moment of fatigue, and I have done so much since 
yesterday, — more than I have done for years. I wonder 
what it is gives us women strength or weakness.” 

“Joy gives strength!” 

“Peace gives strength. Sometimes I think that all the 
weakness in life — women’s weakness —is merely wrong 
adjustment. It is never work that kills —it isn’t just 
living, no matter how hard itis. But it is trying to live when 
you are dead. ... Dearest, if we stayed here, I should be 
always strong! I knowit. All the weariness and the pain 
and the languor would go; I should be what I was meant to 
be, what every human being is meant to be, —strong to bear.”’ 

“Tt is a bitter thought.” 

“‘T suppose that is why men and women struggle so blindly 
to set themselves right, why they run away and commit 
all sorts of follies. They feel within them the capacity for 
health, for happiness, if they can only get right somehow. 
And when they find the way —” 

She made a little gesture with her hand that swept the 
troubles from the road. 

“Tf they can be sure, it is almost a duty — to put them- 
selves right, isn’t it?” 

Here they had come to the temptation which in all their 
intimate moments they had avoided. ... ‘Others have 
remade the pattern of their lives, —why not we?’ The 
woman answered the thought in the man’s mind. 

“T should never take it, even knowing that it is my one 
chance for health and all that I desire, not while my father 

Z 


338 TOGETHER 


lives, not while my mother-in-law lives; it would add an- 
other sorrow to their graves. Nor while my husband has 
aright to his children. We are all bound in criss-cross in life. 
Nor would you, dearest, have me; you would hate me, — 
it would turn our glory to gall!” 

It was not her habit to put her hands before her eyes. 
She was clear with herself, and without the sentimental 
fog. For the Bishop’s creed she cared nothing. For her 
mother-in-law’s prejudices she cared as little. The punish- 
ment of Society she would have met with gleeful contempt. 
People could not take from her what she valued, for she had 
stripped so much that there was little left in her heart to 
be deprived of. As for her husband, he did not exist for 
her; towards him she was spiritually blind. Her children 
were so much a part of her that she never thought of them 
as away from her. Where she went, they would be, as 
a matter of course. 

They had never laid all this on the table before them, 
so to speak, but both had realized it from the beginning. 
They had walked beside the social precipice serene, but 
aware of the depths — and the heights. 

‘“‘T hate to be limited by the opinions, the prejudices, of 
other people, of any one,’ the man protested. ‘There 
seems a cowardice in silently acquiescing in social laws that 
I don’t respect, because the majority so wills it.” 

“Not because it is the will of the majority — not that; 
but because others near you will be made wretched. That is 
the only morality I have!” 

The law of pity in the place of the law of God! A fragile 
leash for passion and egotism. They both shuddered. 

The dusk gathered all about them. Her head still rested 
on his breast, and her hand stole to his face. She whispered, 
‘“‘So we pay the forfeit — for our blindness!” 

“And if I stay —” 

“Don’t say it! Don’t say that! Do you think that 
I could be here this moment in your arms if that were 
possible ?”’ 


TOGETHER 339 


Her voice trembled with scorn, disgust of the adulterous 
world. 

“Hiding and corner lies for us? No, no, my lover, — 
not for you! Not even for me. That is the one price too 
sreat to pay for happiness. It would kill it all. Kill it! 
surely. I should become in your eyes —like one of — them. 
It would be — oh, you understand!”’ She buried her head 
in his coat. 

Again she had saved them, kept the balance of their 
ideal. She would have love, not hidden lust. What she 
had done this once could never be done again without de- 
filement. She had come to him as to a man condemned 
to die, to leave the earth forever, and the one most precious 
thing he wanted and the one most precious thing that she 
had to give, — that she had given freely — to the man 
condemned to death. 

“We have come all the hard way up the heights to in- 
finite joy, to Peace! Shall we throw ourselves down into 
ENE Me ULE tks ie), 


In the night Falkner woke with a start, putting out his 
hand to fend off a catastrophe. She was not there by his 
side! For one moment fear filled his mind, and then as 
he sprang up he saw her in the faint moonlight, leaning 
against the post of the veranda, looking out into the night. 
At his movement she turned. 

“The night was too beautiful to sleep through, dearest ! 
I have so much to think about.” 

She came back to his side and knelt above him, drawing 
her cloak around her. ‘‘See! we are all alone here under 
the stars.” The fog had stolen in from the sea, risen as 
high as the trees, and lay close over land and ocean. The 


heavens were cloudless, and the little moon was low. ‘‘ Those 
tranquil stars up there! They give us our benediction 
for the time to come. ... We have had our supreme 


joy — our desire of desires —and now Peace shall enter 
our hearts and remain there. That is what the night says. 


‘ 


340 TOGETHER 


: It can never be as it was before for you or me. We 
shall carry away something from our feast to feed on all 
our lives. We shall have enough to give others. Love 
makes you rich —so rich! We must give it away, all our 
lives. We shall, dearest, never fear.”’ 

For the soul has its own sensualities, — its self-delight in 
pain, in humiliation, —its mood of generosity, too. The 
‘penetrating warmth of a great passion irradiates life about it. 

“My children, my children,’ she murmured, “‘I love them 
more —I can do for them more. And for dear Mother 
Pole — and even for him. I shall be gentler —I shall under- 
stand. ... Love wasset beforeme. I have taken it, and 
it has made me strong. I will be glad and love the world, 
all of it, for your sake, because you have blessed me... . 
Ours is not the fire that turns inward and feeds upon itself!” 

““Oh, Margaret, Margaret ! —”’ 

“‘Listen,” she murmured, clasping his neck, “‘ you are the 
Man! You must spread the flame where I cannot. I kiss 
you. I have eaten of life with you. Together we have 
understood. Forget me, cease to love me; but always you 
must be stronger, greater, nobler because you have held 
me in your arms and loved me. If you cannot carry us 
upwards, it has been base, — the mere hunger of animals, — 
my lover! You have made of my weakness strength, and 
I have given you peace! Pour it out for me in deeds that 
I may know I have loved a Man, that my hero lives!” 

Like a cry of the spirit it rang out into the night between 
the mist-hidden earth and the silent stars. In the stillness 
there had come a revelation of life, —the eternal battle of man 
between the spirit and the flesh, between the seen and the 
unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, 
that must be. And the vision of man’s little, misshapen 
existence, — the incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is, — 
and also the significance of him, — this material atom, the 
symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth before them. 
This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the 
spirit within was freed by the touch of flesh,.,. 


TOGETHER 341 


Already in the calm night desire and passion seemed to 
fade from them. Here had ended their passion, and now 
must begin the accomplishment. When the revelation 
comes, and the spirit thus speaks through the flesh, it is 
peace with human beings. 

They lay there awake but silent into the gray hours of 
dawn, and when the mist had spread upwards to the sky, 
shutting out the stars, they slept. 


CHAPTER XLI 


Ar breakfast Joe Viney said: — 

‘“‘T was lobsterin’ this morning.” 

‘Tt must have been the thud of your oars that we heard 
when we woke.”’ 

‘‘Mos’ likely, — I was down there at the end of the island, 
hauling in the pots. It’s goin’ to be a greasy day. But 
there’s wind comin’.”’ 

They could hear the long call of a steamer’s whistle and 
the wail of the fog-horn beyond the next island. The little 
white house was swathed in the sea mist. 

“Better take the steamer at the Neck, if you’re going 
to the city,’ Mrs. Viney suggested. ‘“It’ll be cold and 
damp sailing this morning.” 

““Never!’’ Margaret protested. 

Mrs. Viney looked at Margaret pityingly. That a woman 
from the city should care to come to this forlorn, lonesome 
spot, ‘“when the summer folks had gone,” and sleep out 
of doors on fir boughs, and go off in a messy sail-boat in 
a fog, when there was a clean, fast steamer that would take 
her in an hour to the city —it was a mystery. As she 
packed some pieces of soggy bread, a little meat, and still 
soggier cake into a box for their luncheon she shook her 
head, protesting : — 

“You'll spoil that hat o’ yourn. It wasn’t meant for 
sailin’.”’ 

“No, it wasn’t; that’s true!” She took off the flower- 
bedecked hat with its filmy veiling. ‘Would you like it? 
I shall find a cap in the boat.” 

‘Clearly,’ thought Mrs. Viney, ‘the woman iscrazy ;’ but she 
accepted the hat. Afterwards she said to her husband: — 

342 





TOGETHER 343 


“T can’t make them two out. She ain’t young, and she 
ain’t exactly old, and she ain’t pretty, — well, she’s got the 
best of the bargain, a little wisp like her.’? For, woman- 
like, she admired Falkner in his sweater and flannels, strong 
and male, with a dark coat of tan on his face. 

Viney accompanied them to the boat, waddling across the 
field, his hands in the armholes of his vest. He said little, 
but as he shoved them off in their tender, he observed : — 

“It’s the sort of day you could get lost in mighty easy.” 

“Oh,” Falkner called back cheerily, “I guess I know my 
way.” 

“Well, I guess you do!”’ 


As Viney had said, the wind came through the fog, driving 
the boat in unseen fashion, while the sail hung almost limp. 
There was a little eddy of oily water at the stern; they 
were slipping, sliding through the fog-bank, back to the 
earth. 

“Back to life,’ Falkner hummed, “back; back, to the 
land, to the world !”’ 

The fog clung in Margaret’s hair, and dimmed her eyes. 
She bared her arms to feel the cool touch of it on her skin. 
Clean things, like the sun yesterday, the resinous firs, the 
salty fog, — clean elemental things, — how she loved them! 

“And suppose,” Falkner suggested, ‘‘I should lose my 
way in this nest of reefs and islands and we got shipwrecked 
or carried out to sea?” 

“T should hear Ned calling through the fog.” A simple 
answer, but withal enough. Their hour, which they had 
set themselves, was past.. And lying here in the impal- 
pable mist, slipping towards the hidden port, she was 
filled with ineffable content... . 

“You are still radiant!’ Falkner said wonderingly. 

“Tt can’t fade — never wholly! I cherish it.”” She drew 
her arms close about her. ‘Sacred things never utterly die!” 

They had found it, they had lived it, they knew — what 
the unspiritual and carnal millions that clutter God’s earth 


344 TOGETHER 


may never know —ecstasy, the secret behind the stars, 
beyond the verge of the sea, in the great lunar spaces of 
spirit. 


On they glided through the thoroughfares, around island 
points, across reaches of the sea, sweeping onward now with 
an audible gurgle in their wake, the sails bellying forward; 
veering this way, falling off there, as the impassive man 
touched the tiller, obeying an instinct, seeing into the dark be- 
yond. Nowa bit of cliff loomed in the fog, again a shingled 
roof or a cluster of firs, and the whistling buoy at the harbor’s 
mouth began to bellow sadly, — reminders all of the shell 
of that world towards which they sailed. And at last the 
harbor, with its echoing bells and fog-whistles, the pro- 
testing shrieks of its man-machines; suddenly the colossal 
hull of a schooner at anchor. Then the ghostly outlines 
of the huddled shipping, the city roofs, the steeples, the 
shriek of engines in the freight yards — they touched the 
earth! It had ended. The noise of living reverberated 
in their ears. 

Margaret rose with a sigh, and looked back through the 
closing curtain of fog to an island headland misty and vague. 

“My heaven — oh, my heaven! our haven, my master!” 

Like two newly wakened beings, stunned by the light 
and sound around them, they stumbled over the wharf. A 
large sailing vessel was loading there for its voyage, — 
a Portuguese ship bound for Demerara, so the black 
sailor said whom Falkner questioned. With a last look 
at its tall masts they took their way into the city and so to 
the station. 

Here was the same crowd coming from the trains, —the 
little human motes pushing hither and thither, hurrying 
from train to train, dashing, dawdling, loitering. Were 
they the same motes as two days before? Were they always 
the same, — marionettes wound to perform the clamorous 
motions of life? Or were they men and women like them- 
selves, with their own great secrets in their hearts? Above 


TOGETHER 345 


all, the secret that transforms! Had these others, too, gone 
into the great high places? 

They walked to the bridge while they waited for the 
Bedmouth train. Far down the harbor rose the tall masts 
of the Portuguese ship. 

‘Bound for Demerara,’’ murmured Falkner, with a smile; 
““we might be sailing for the Windward Islands?” 

“No,” Margaret smiled back; “‘ we love too much for that, 
—you and I.” 


CHAPTER XLII 


Wiruin the old parlor of the Bedmouth house Mrs. Pole 
was waiting for a step. It came at last. ee 
“The children?” Margaret demanded, kissing the old 

lady. 

Perfectly well.’’ 

“T must go up to them,” and she started for the door. 

“Wait !’’ Mrs. Pole said, looking up sadly into the younger 
woman’s pale face, which still held the glow. 

“Yes, mother?” The voice rang with a note of vitality, 
of life, as if to chant,‘I have come back to you from a 
long way off!’ Mrs. Pole said slowly : — 

“Lawrence is upstairs. He came on from New York 
yesterday.” 

as Oh 12? 

At the head of the stairs she met her husband, who had 
heard her voice below. 

“You have been away!’ he said sharply, an unwonted 
touch of authority in his voice. 

It was in her heart to say: ‘Yes, in heaven! Can’t 
you see it in my face?’ She replied gently : — 

“Yes, I have been — away !”’ 

““ Where ?”’ 

She looked at him out of her deep eyes, and said slowly : — 

‘Do you wish me to tell you?” | 

And after a moment, as if her husband was not there 
and she were looking through him at something beyond, 
she went on into the children’s room. Pole, steadying him- 
self by the hand-rail, descended the stairs. 

He no longer existed, even as a convention, for his wife. 

346 








CHAPTER XLIII 


ISABELLE had not succeeded in bringing Vickers home 
with her that first time she had gone abroad. They had 
had a very pleasant month in the Dolomites, and he had 
taken her to Paris to join the Woodyards, with whom she 
returned. Whenever she had spoken to Vickers of coming 
home he had smiled and made a little joke. Once he said, 
“Not yet,—I cannot go yet, Belle,” and she understood 
that it was “that beast of a woman,” as she called 
Mrs. Conry, who kept him. She wanted to say to him, 
“Well, Vick, if you won’t leave her, why don’t you marry 
her then!’’ But gentle as her brother was to her, she did 
not like to touch on that topic. 

She had meant to go over the next spring, but the new 
house was under way then. A year later a letter from 
Fosdick, who was returning from Russia by the way of Venice, 
made her start for Europe at once. 

.. “Madam,” Fosdick wrote, ‘having sucked our 
Vickers dry, has left him at last, 1am happy to say. Gone 
off with a fresh orange. Vick ‘doesn’t realize his luck, — 
he’s plain dazed. Before the other orange becomes dry, 
it is our simple duty — yours and mine — to remove the 
stranded hero out of reach. I think you can doit now... . 
I forgot to say that the Conry left with him a pledge of her 
return in the shape of a lump of a girl, her daughter by Conry. 
Vick seems idiotically tied to this little Conry. ... Oh, 
it is a shame, a shame!” 

Isabelle cabled Fosdick to bring Vickers with him to 
Paris and started with her mother. ‘‘No sermons, you 
know, mother,” she warned Mrs. Price. ‘ It’s something 
you and I don’t understand.”’ 

When Vickers came to their hotel in Paris, it seemed to 

349 


350 TOGETHER 


Isabelle that the last two years had worked more damage 
than the previous six. There was a dazed and submissive 
air about her brother that brought the tears to her eyes. 
In the languid, colorless face before her, she could scarcely 
find a trace of the pale, tense boy, who had roused her in 
the middle of the night the day before he left St. Louis. . . . 

“Why don’t you come to this hotel?’”’ Mrs. Price had 
demanded. 

Vickers had made an excuse, and when his mother had 
left the room, he said to Isabelle, ‘“‘ You will have to ex- 
plain to mother that I am not alone.” 

Isabelle gasped, and Vickers hastened to say, “ You 
see Delia is with me.”’ 

“ Dick wrote me that she left her child!”’ 

“Yes... . Lamreally very fond of the poor little thing.” 

“The beast!’’? Isabelle muttered. 

Vickers shuddered, and Isabelle resolved that no matter 
what happened she would not allow herself to refer again 
to either mother or child. Later she walked back with 
him to his rooms and saw the girl. Delia Conry was a 
heavily built and homely girl of thirteen, with light gray eyes. 
All but the eyes were like her father, the builder. There 
was no hint of the mother’s soft, seductive physique. 

“Delia,” Vickers said gently, ‘“come and speak to my 
sister, Mrs. Lane.” 

As the child awkwardly held out a hand, Isabelle felt the 
tears come into her eyes. Here was her old Vickers, — the 
gentle, idealistic soul she had loved, the only being it seemed 
to her then that she had ever really loved. 

“Delia and I have been tramping the Louvre,” Vickers 
remarked. ‘‘That’s the way we are learning history.” 

Isabelle glanced about the forlorn little sitting-room of 
the third-class hotel. 

‘““Why did you come here?”’ 

“Tt does well enough, and it’s near the Louvre and places. 
...  Itis very reasonable.” 

Then Isabelle remembered what Fosdick had said about 


TOGETHER 351 


Vickers’s gift of half his fortune to Mrs. Conry. ‘‘ You see 
the idiot hadn’t sense enough to run off with a man who 
had money. Some damn fool artist! That’s why you 
must pack Vick away as soon as you can get him to go.” 
With this in her mind she exclaimed impulsively : — 
“You are coming back with us, Vick!” 
“To live in America?’ he queried with bitter humor. 
“So you came out as a rescue party!” 
“You must get back into life,” Isabelle urged vaguely. 
“What life? You don’t mean the hardware business?” 


“Don’t be silly! ... You can’t go on living over here 
alone by yourself with that child.” 
“Why not?” 


“Oh, because — you must do something, Vick! I want 
you to be famous.” 

“That doesn’t seem quite possible, now,’ he replied 
gently. 

“You'll come and live with me — oh, I need you, Vick!”’ 

She threw her arms about him and hugged him tightly 
to heras she had asa girl. The intensity of her feeling moved 
him strangely, and her words also. What was it she meant by 
“needing him’’? 

“You must — that’s the thing !”’ 

Holding her head away she searched his face critically, 
and her heart was wrung again by the sense of waste in it 
all. “Poor brother,’’ she murmured, tightening her clasp. 

“T’m not going over as a helpless dependent !’’ he protested, 
and suddenly without warning he shot out his question, — 
“And what have you made out of it? How have the years 
been ?” 

“Oh, we jog on, John and I, — just the usual thing, you 
know, — no heights and no depths!” 

An expression of futility came momentarily into her eyes. 
It wasn’t what she had pictured to herself, her marriage and 
life. Somehow she had never quite caught hold of life. But 
that was a common fate. Why, after all, should she com- 
miserate her brother, take the ‘poor Vick’ tone that every- 


352 TOGETHER 


body did about him? Had she attained to a much more 
satisfactory level than he, or had the others who ‘poor Vick- 
ered’ him? There was something in both their natures, 
perhaps, at jar with life, incapable of effectiveness. 

Vickers finally consented to return to America with his 
mother and sister “for a visit.’”? Dela, he said, ought 
to see her father, who was a broken man, living in some 
‘small place in the West. (Isabelle suspected that Vickers 
had sent him also money.) Conry had written cages lately, 
asking for news of his daughter. 

“Does Vick intend to tote that lump of a girl afte with 
him for the next twenty years?’’ Mrs. Price demanded of 
Isabelle, when she heard that Delia was to be of- their party. 

‘““T suppose so, unless she totes herself off!” 

“The woman dumped her child on him! Well, well, the 
Colonel had something of the fool in him where women were 
concerned, — only I looked after that!’ 

“Mother,” Isabelle retorted mischievously, “I am afraid 
you'll never be able to keep down the fool 1 in us; Vick is 
pretty nearly all fool, the dear!” 

Her brother’s return being settled, Isabelle plunged into 
her shopping, buying many things for both the houses, as 
well as her dresses. There were friends flitting back and 
forth, snatches of sight-seeing, and theatres. By the time 
they took the steamer Isabelle confessed she was a “ wreck.”’ 
Yet she talked of taking an apartment in Paris the next spring 
and sending her child to a convent, as Mrs. Rogers had done. 
“Tt would be nice to have my own corner over here to 
run to,’ she explained. “Only Potts wants me to bury myself 
at Schwalbach.”’ 

Cairy joined them at Plymouth. He had been in London 
making arrangements for the production of a play there, 
and had hopes of enlarging his sphere. 

“Coming home?” he asked Vickers. “That’s good!” 

“Thank you,” Vickers replied dryly. 

Cairy had already the atmosphere of success about him. 
He still limped in a distinguished manner, and his clothes 


4 
it 


TOGETHER 353 


marked him even in the company of well-dressed American 
men. He had grown stouter, — was worried by the fear of 
flesh, as he confided to Vickers, — and generally took himself 
with serious consideration. It was a far call from the days 
when he had been Gossom’s ready pen. He now spoke of 
his “work” importantly, and was kind to Vickers, who “had 
made such a mess of things,” “with all that money, too.” 
With his large egotism, his uniform success where women 
were concerned, Vickers’s career seemed peculiarly stupid. 
“No Woman, ” he said to Isabelle, “should be able to break 
a man.” And he thought thankfully of the square blow 
between the eyes that Conny had dealt him. 

In the large gay party of returning Americans that sur- 
rounded Isabelle and Cairy on the ship Vickers was like a 
queer little ghost. He occupied himself with his small 
charge, reading and walking with her most of the days. 
Isabelle was conscious of the odd figure Vickers made, in his 
ill-fitting Italian clothes, with an old Tyrolean cloak of faded 
green hanging about him, his pale face half hidden by a 
scrubby beard, his unseeing eyes, wandering over the great 
steamer, a little girl’s hand in his, or reading in a corner of 
the deserted dining hall. : 

Vickers was not so dull of eye, however, that he did not 
observe Isabelle and Cairy, sitting side by side on the deck, 
talking and reading. They tried to “bring him in,” but they 
had a little language of jokes and references personal to 
themselves. If Vickers wondered what his sister, as he 
knew her, found so engrossing in the Southerner, he was 
answered by a remark Isabelle made: — 

“Tom is so charming! ... There are few men in Amer- 
ica who understand how to talk to a woman, you know.” 

When Vickers had left his native land, the art of talking 
to a woman as distinguished from a man had not been de- 
veloped. ... 

Lane met the party at Quarantine. That was his domes- 
tic office, — “meeting” and “seeing off.’’ As he stood on 
the deck of the bobbing tug waving to his wife, he was a sym- 

24 


354 TOGETHER 


bol of the American husband, Cairy jokingly pointed out. 
“There’s John holding out the welcoming arms to roving 
wife.”’ And there were hundreds of them, roving wives, on 
the deck, very smartly dressed for their return to domesticity, 
with laden trunks coming up out of the holds, and long 
customs bills to pay, the expectant husbands waiting at the 
pier with the necessary money. And there were others with 
their husbands beside them on the decks, having carried 
them through Europe, bill-payers and arrangers extraor- 
dinary for their majesties, the American wives. Cairy was 
writing a farce about it with the title, “Coming Home.” 

Vickers, who scarcely remembered his brother-in-law, 
looked curiously at the self-possessed, rather heavy man on 
the tug. He was an effective person, “one who had done 
something,” the kind his countrymen much admired. “Had 
a pleasant voyage, I suppose, and all well?” Then he 
had turned to Vickers, and with slight hesitation, as if not 
sure of his ground, observed, “ You will find considerable 
changes, I suppose.” 

“T suppose so,”’ Vickers assented, feeling that conver- 
sation between them would be limited. In the confusion 
at the pier while the numerous trunks were being disgorged, 
Vickers stood apart with Delia Conry and had an oppor- 


tunity to observe the quiet, efficient manner in which John — 


Lane arranged everything. He had greeted Isabelle and 
his mother impartially, with a family kiss for both. Vickers 
caught his brother-in-law’s eye on him several times as they 
were waiting, and once Lane made as if to speak and was 
silent. Vickers was sensitively aware that this man of 
affairs could not pretend to understand him, — could at the 
best merely conceal under general tolerance and family 
good feeling his real contempt for one who had so com- 
pletely “made a mess of things.” He had foreseen the 
brother-in-law, and that had been one reason why he had 
hesitated to return, even for a visit. Lane soon made an- 


other effort, saying: “You will find it rather warm in the © 


city. We have had a good deal of hot weather this summer.” 


7 


TOGETHER 395 


“Yes,”’ Vickers replied; “I remember New York in Sep- 
tember. But I am used to long summers.” 

As the stranger’s eyes roved over the noisy pier, Lane 
looked at the little girl, who was rendered dumb by the 
confusion and clung to Vickers’s hand, and then he eyed his 
brother-in-law again, as if he were recollecting the old 
Colonel and thinking of the irony in the fact that his only 
surviving son should be this queer, half-foreign chap. 

A large motor waited outside the pier to take the party to 
the hotel. 

“Aren’t you coming, Tom?” [sabelle asked, as Cairy 
made for a cab with his luggage. 

“T will meet you at the station to-morrow,” Cairy called 
back. “ Business!” 

“Well, — how is everything?” she asked her husband. 
“Glad to see me back?” 

“Of course.” 

They darted swiftly up town to an immense hotel, where 
Lane had engaged rooms for the party. Having seen them 
into the elevator, he returned by the motor to his office. 


CHAPTER XLIV 


Tue old Farm at Grafton had been marvellously trans- 
formed. Vickers Price, standing on the terrace the evening 
of his arrival, looked wistfully for landmarks, for something 
to recall the place he had loved as a boy, which had 
gathered charm in his imaginative memory these years of 
his exile. The Georgian facade of the new house faced 
the broad meadow through which the wedding party had ~ 
wandered back to the Farm the day of Isabelle’s marriage. 
Below the brick terrace, elaborate gardens, suggesting 
remotely Italy, had been laid out on the slope of the 
New-England hill. The thin poplars, struggling to maintain 
themselves in the bitter blasts of an American winter, gave 
an unreal air to the place as much as anything. The village 
of Grafton, which had once been visible as a homely white- — 
dotted road beyond the meadow, had been “planted out.” 
There was a formal garden now where the old barn stood, 
from which the Colonel’s pointers had once yapped their 
greetings on the arrival of strangers. The new brick stables 
and the garage were in the woods across the road, connected 
with the house by telephone. ; 

~On their arrival by the late train they had had supper ~ 
quite informally. It had been served by two men, however, ~ 
and there was a housekeeper to relieve the mistress of the 
care of the increased establishment. What had bewildered 
Vickers on his return to America after an absence of ten 
years, from the moment he had taken ship until the Lanes’ - 
new French motor had whisked him up to the Farm — ~ 
Isabelle still clung to the old’ name — was the lavish © 
luxury, the increased pace of living, on this side of the ocean. © 
The years he had spent in Italy had been the richest 
356 





TOGETHER 357 


period of our industrial renaissance. In the rising tide of 
wealth the signs of the old order — the simplicity of the 
Colonel’s day — had been swept away. 

As Vickers stood rather apart from the others, who were 
strolling about the terrace, and looked at Dog Mountain, 
the only perfectly familiar feature in the scene, Isabelle tucked 
her arm under his and led him towards the gardens: — 

“Vick, 1 want you to see what I have done. Don’t you 
think it’s much better? I am not altogether satisfied.” 
She glanced back at the long facade: ‘1 think I should 
have done better with Herring rather than Osgood. But 
when we started to alter the old place, I didn’t mean to do 
so much to it.” 

Isabelle knew more now than when Osgood had been 
engaged, two years before, and Herring’s reputation had 
meanwhile quite overshadowed the older architect’s. 

“T told Isabelle at the start,’’ said Cairy, who joined 
them, “she had better pull the old place down, and have a 
fresh deal. You had to come to it practically in the end?” 
He turned to Isabelle teasingly. 

“Yes,” she admitted half regretfully; “that’s the way 
I always do a thing, — walk backwards into it, as John says. 
But if we had built from the ground up, it wouldn’t have 
been this place, I suppose. ... And I don’t see why we 
did it, — Grafton is so far from anything.” 

“Tt’s neither Tuxedo nor Lenox,’’ Cairy suggested. 

“Just plain Connecticut. Well, you see the Colonel left 
the place to me, — that was the reason.” 

And also the fact that he had left her only a small portion 
of his fortune besides. It was an ironical rebuke for his act 
that much of the small fortune he had given her had 
gone to transform his beloved Farm into something he 
would never have recognized. Vickers thought sadly, “If 
the old Colonel’s ghost should haunt this terrace, he couldn’t 
find his way about!” | 

“But it’s snug and amusing,—the Farm? Isn’t it?” 
- Cairy demanded of Vickers in a consoling manner. 


BBS /)° TOGETHER 


“T shouldn’t call it snug,” Vickers replied, unconsciously 
edging away from the Southerner, “nor wholly amusing !”’ 

“You don’t like my efforts!” Isabelle exclaimed wearily. 
She herself, as she had said, was not satisfied; but money 
as well as strength and her husband’s Hale of ‘more 
building”? had held her hand. 

“We all change,” Vickers replied humorously. “I can’t 
‘blame the old place for looking different. I have changed 
somewhat myself, and you, Cairy,”’ — he glanced at the figure 
by his sister’s side, which had sleek marks of prosperity as 
well asthe Farm, — “too. All changed but you, Isabelle !’’ 

“But I have changed a lot!’ she protested. ‘I have 
grown better looking, Vickie, and my mind has developed, 
hasn’t it, Tom? One’s family never sees any change but 
the wrinkles!” ... | 

Vickers, turning back to the terrace where Fosdick and 
Gossom were smoking, had a depressed feeling that of all 
the changes his was the greatest. 

“T must look in on my little girl,” he explained to 
Isabelle, as he left her and Cairy. 

Isabelle watched him mount the steps. His small figure 
had grown heavy from his inactive life abroad. The thick 
hair had almost gone from the top of his head, and the 
neat pointed beard had become bushy. In his negligent 
clothes he looked quite slouchy, she had felt that even- 
ing, as if he had long ceased to have any interest in his 
person. ‘It’s all that beast of a woman,” she said re- 
sentfully to Cairy, remembering the slender, quite elegant 
brother of the old days. ‘“‘And to think of his saddling 
himself with her brat and lugging her around with him! 
I couldn’t make him drop her in New York with her 
governess. But it’s impossible!” 

“The lady left him her husband’s child, as a souvenir, 
didn’t she?” 

“T can’t think of it!’ Isabelle exclaimed, shrugging her 
shoulders. ‘To go off with that other man — after all he 
had given up for her! The beast !”’ 


TOGETHER 359 


“Perhaps that was the best she could do for him under 
the circumstances,’’ Cairy remarked philosophically. ‘ But 
the child must be a bore.” He laughed at the comical 
situation. 

“ Just like Vick!” 

It was also like Vickers to give Mrs. Conry a large share 
of his small fortune when she had seen fit to leave him, as 
Fosdick had told her... . 

After visiting his small charge, who was lonely this first 
night in the strange house, Vickers had gone to his room 
and sat down by the window. Below him on the terrace 
Fosdick and Gossom were discussing Socialism, the Russian 
revolution, and the War of Classes. New topics, or rather 
new forms of old themes, they seemed to Vickers. Fosdick, 
from his rolling around the earth, had become an expert on 
the social revolution; he could tell the approximate dates 
when it ‘would be pulled off’’ in all the great countries. 
He had bought a farm somewhere in Vermont, and had sat 
down to wait for the social revolution; meantime he was 
raising apples, and at intervals descended upon the houses 
of his friends to inveigh against predatory wealth or visited 
the city for the sake of more robust amusement. Gossom, 
whose former radicalism was slowly modifying into an “ intel- 
ligent conservatism,” was mildly opposing I osdick’s views. 
““We have gone too far in this campaign of vilification of 
wealth, — Americans are sound at the core, — what they 
want is conservative individualism, a sense of the law,” 
etc. Vickers smiled to himself, and looking out over the 
old meadow forgot all about the talkers. 

From the meadow came the sweet scent of the September 
crop of hay. There was the river at the end of the vista, 
disappearing into a piece of woodland. The place was sown 
with memories, and Vickers’s eyes wére moist as he leaned 
there, looking forth into the night. It was but a shallow New 
England brook, this river, meandering through cranberry 
bogs, with alders and bilberry bushes on either side. He re- 
membered the cranberry picking at this season, and later when 


360 TOGETHER 


the meadow had been flooded, the skating over the bushes 
that were frozen in the ice, and the snaky forms of the cran- 
berry plants visible at the bottom. All these years he had 
thought of this little meadow as he had conceived it when 
a child, — a mighty river flowing on mysteriously through 
the dark valley,—on, around the woods that made out 
like a bold headland, then on and on to the remote sea. It 
was dim and wild, this meadow of his childhood, and the 
brook was like that river on which was borne to Camelot 
the silent bark with the fair Elaine. His older brother 
had taken him down that same brook in a canoe, — a quite 
wonderful journey. They had started early, just as the 
August moon was setting; and as they passed the headland 
of woods — pines and maples fearful in their dark recesses — 
an early thrush had broken the silence of the glimmering 
dawn with its sweet call. And another had answered from 
the depth of the wood, and then another, while the little 
canoe had slipped noiselessly past into strange lands, — 
a country altogether new and mysterious. ... To-night 
that old boyhood thrill came over him, as when kneeling 
in the canoe with suspended paddle, in the half light of 
dawn, he had heard the thrushes calling from the woods. 
Then it had seemed that life was like this adventurous 
journey through the gray meadows, past the silent woods, 
on into the river below, and the great sea, far, far away! 
A wonderful journey of enlarging mystery from experience 
to experience into some great ocean of understanding. .. . 

Vickers sat down at the piano by the window, and for- 
getting all that had taken the place of his dream, — the 
searing flame of his manhood, — struck the gentle chords 
of that boyhood journey, something of the river and the 
meadow and the woods and the gray dawn, which had often 
sounded in his ears far away in Venice. 

Isabelle and Cairy, coming up the terrace steps, heard the 
notes and stopped to listen. 

“Charming!” Cairy murmured. ‘“ His own?” 

“How I wish he would try to do something, and eet 


TOGETHER 361 


his work played by our orchestras! He could if he would 
only interest himself enough. But the ambition seems 
gone out of him. He merely smiles when I talk about 
me 

“He'll come back to it,’ Cairy grinned. ‘It’s in the 
air here to put your talent in the front window.” 

Vickers played on softly, dreaming of the boy’s river of 
life, at home once more in the old Farm. 


Early the next morning as Vickers stole softly through 
the corridor, on his way for a stroll, a door opened and Isa- 
belle looked out. 

“You'll find coffee downstairs, Vick. I remembered 
your dawn-wandering habit and asked Mrs. Stevens to 
have it ready for you. I'll join you in a few moments.” 

Before he had finished his coffee, Isabelle appeared and 
sleepily poured out a cup for herself. The servant was 
making ready a tray at the sideboard. 

“Tom is one of your sleepless kind, too,” she explained. 
“He does his writing before the house is awake, so as not 
to be disturbed, or he says he does. _ I believe he just turns 
over and takes another nap!”’ 

““Cairy seems at home here,’’ Vickers observed, sipping 
his coffee. 

“Of course, Tommy is one of the family,’”’ Isabelle replied 
lightly. ‘‘He is much more domesticated than John, 
though, since his great success last winter, he hasn’t been 
up very much.” 

‘Has he made a great success?”’ Vickersinquired. ‘‘ What 
at?” 

“Haven’t you heard of his play! It ran all the winter, 
and this new one they say will also make a great hit.” 

Vickers, who remembered Cairy in college as one always 
endeavoring after things out of his reach, looked mildly 
surprised. 

“T hadn’t heard that he was a dramatist,’’ he said. 

“YT wish you would do something!” Isabelle remarked, 


362 TOGETHER 


feeling that Cairy’s success might point for Vickers his own 
defeat, and stir him into healthy action. 

“What? Write a play?” 

“No— you old dear!’ She caressed his hand. “I 
“hink it would be good for you — to feel you were doing 
something in the world, instead of running about with that 
absurd child.’”? She wanted to say much more about 
Delia Conry, but bided a more fitting time. 

“T haven’t run much so far,’’ was all that Vickers replied. 
“You shouldn’t have bothered to come down,” he added 
when the coffee was fmished. ‘“T just wanted to poke around 
the old place as I used to.’ 

“T know, — and I as to be with you, of course, this 
first time. Don’t you remember how we got our own 
breakfasts when we went shooting in the autumn?” 

Her brother nodded. 

“Those were good times, Vick! ... They were the 
best for both of us,” she added less buoyantly. She pushed 
away her cup, put her arm about his shoulders, and kissed 
him. 

“You shouldn’t say that, Belle!” 

“Vickie, it’s so nice to hug you and have you all to my- 
self before the others are up. Ive missed some one to go 
batting with me, to hug and bully and cha with. Now 
you’ve come I shall be a girl all over again.” 

And Isabelle was her old self for the first time since 
Vickers had joined her in Paris a month before, — no 
longer preoccupied, striving after some satisfaction that 
never perfectly arrived. Here the past was upon them both, 
— in spite of Osgood’s transformations, —a past when they 
had been close, in the precious intimacy of brother and 
sister. Outside in the new, very new Dutch garden, Isa- 
belle resumed her anxieties Gt the day. 

“The gardener ought not to have put those bulbs there, — 
he knows nothing really! I shall have to find another man. 
... I hope the chauffeur John engaged will get along 
with the houseman. The last one fought. ... Oh, did 


TOGETHER 363 


I tell you that Potts is coming out Saturday, — the great 
Dr. Potts? He wants to look me over,.— get me ready for 
the winter campaign. ... There’s Tom, writing at the 
desk by his window. Hello, Tommy!” Isabelle waved a 
hand gayly at the balcony above them. Vickers smiled 
at the disconnected remarks, so like Isabelle. Her con- 
versation was a loose bundle of impressions, reflections, 
wishes, and feelings, especially her feelings about other 
people. And Isabelle had a taste for lame cats, as her 
mother said, — at least those cats that obviously felt their 
lameness. 

“You don’t like Tom,’ she rambled on. “Why not? 
Poor Tommy! he’s so sweet and clever. Why don’t you 
like Tom, Vickers? You must like him — because he’ll be 
here a lot, and I am awfully fond of him.” 

“Why ‘poor Tom’?’’ Vickers asked laconically. 

“He’s had such a hard time, a struggle to get on, — his 
people were poor, very nice though, — the best Virginia, 
you know. ... He’s ambitious, and he isn’t strong. If 
this play shouldn’t go — he’s counting on it so much!” 

Vickers smilingly drew her hand beneath his arm and 
led her out through the garden into the meadow. ‘‘The 
same old Belle after all,’ he murmured. “I don’t see that 
Brother Cairy is badly off, — he has a good deal of petting, 
I fancy. I have heard all about that Virginia childhood 
and the rest of it. . . . Do you remember, Belle, when we 
used to go over to the Ed Prices’ and were scared when we 
saw a tramp in the bushes on the hill? And how we ran 
through the willows as if the devil was after us? — Who 
have the Ed Prices’ farm now?” 

“Don’t you know that father gave it to Alice Johnston? 
Wasn’t it nice of him! Her husband is in the road, in St. 
Louis, doing very well, Johnsays. Aliceis over there now, — 
she brings the children on for the summer. ... I don’t 
see much of her — she is so enveloped in children!” 

“What’s become of the brother, — the one I licked and 
threw into Beaty’s pond?” 


364 TOGETHER 


“The world seems to have licked him, too,’’ Isabelle | 
replied, laughing at the old memory. ‘The last time Alice 
spoke of him she said he was on some newspaper in Spo- 
kane, — had been in the Klondike, I believe. ... There’s 
Mr. Gossom and Tom! We must go back for breakfast.”’ 

“Thanks!I have had mine. I think I’ll walk over to 
the Price place and see Alice. Don’t look for me before 
noon,” 

“But there are people coming for luncheon,” Isabelle 
protested. 

Vickers waved his hand to her and called back, a 
think you’ll get on very well without me!”’ 

Isabelle was already answering Cairy’s shout from ‘hi 
terrace. As Vickers took his way through the meadow, 
he thought how sweet she was, the real Isabelle, when one | 
got to her as he had this morning. But she had never 
once mentioned John; her husband seemed to be very little 
‘in her mind. 


CHAPTER XLV 


Vickers strode off through the meadow that morning 
in the hope of finding familiar things, and indulging in old 
memories. The country roads had been widened and im- 
proved, and many of the farm-houses had given way to 
more or less pretentious “places.’’ Motors whirled past him. 
The hill that he remembered as a veritable mountain was a 
mere rise in the straightened road over which a fast car 
plunged at full speed, covering him with dust and leaving 
behind a sickening odor. He struck off into a wood-lot; 
here and in the pastures and meadows he found himself 
again. It was nearly noon before he came up the lane that 
led to the Ed Price farm. 

This was off the beat of the motors, away from the new 
“estates,” at the end of a grassy road bordered by gray 
birches. The ample old house he remembered very well with 
its square central chimney and stretch of outbuildings that 
joined the yellow barn. At his knock a broad-shouldered, 
smiling woman came to the door, and after a moment’s hesi- 
tation exclaimed : — | 

“Why, Vick, — can it be you?” 

“Yes, Cousin Alice.” 

She led him to the orchard in the rear, where with the aid 
of two little boys she was preparing vegetables for dinner. 
Tying on a large apron, she said: — 

“You see we all have to take a hand. Won’t you have a 
bib and dip in, too? .. . Children, this is your uncle — 
cousin. Which is it, Vickers?” 

It was pleasant in the long grass under the apple tree, 
looking across the orchard of gnarled and stubby trees to 
the lane. Mrs. Johnston worked and talked, while the 

365 


366 TOGETHER 


little boys with furtive glances pecked at the peas like two 
birds. 

“T heard you were coming — I did not know just when. 
Itis good to see you back, Vick!” 

There was a comfortable largeness in the atmosphere of 
this woman, which suited the homely background of the square 
farm-house and the peaceful orchard. And there was a 
pleasant warmth in her tone. 

“How do you find it ?”’ she asked; “or perhaps you haven’t 
had time yet to know.” 

“Jt hardly seems like being home,” Vickers admitted, 
“everything is so changed — everything but this!” he added 
gratefully, thinking of Alice as well as the farm. 

“Yes, —the country has changed, so many rich people have 
bought places. And your old home —” She hesitated to 
complete her sentence. 

“T can’t find my way around there.” Vickers laughed. 
“What would the Colonel say!” 

Alice looked as if she preferred not to think what the 
Colonel might say of his daughter’s alterations. 

“T suppose Isabelle had to have more room, —she has 
so many people with her. And you will find that life has 
changed over here in ten years.” 

“Nothing but change!” 


“Except among the poor! ... No, Tot, you can’t eat 
the pods. There, boys, take sister and run out to the 
barn to help Charlie wash the buggy... . How does Isa- 


belle seem to you?” 

“T scarcely know — I haven’t made up my mind. How 
does she seem to you?” 

“She does too much, — she’s not strong enough,” Alice 
replied evasively. 

‘No, she doesn’t seem strong; but she can’t keep still!” 

“She gets so little comfort out of anything, — that is the 
worst of it. Sometimes I wish John weren’t so strong, — 
that he would have an illness, so that Isabelle would have 
something definite to do.” 


TOGETHER 367 


“She would have a trained nurse!” Vickers suggested with 
a laugh. 

“She is such a dear, — I wish she were happier !”’ 

“Perhaps that isn’t in the blood.” 

“ But I never saw a happier creature than she was the day 
she was married! And John is a fine fellow, and she has 
everything a woman could want.”’ ni 

‘‘A woman wants a good many things these days.” .. . 

They chatted on about Isabelle and her love of people, 
and then about St. Louis and the old days at Grafton. For 
the first time since he had landed, it seemed to Vickers, he 
was permitted to ignore his failure, — he was at home. 
When he rose to go, Alice protested : — 

“But you aren’t going back, —it is just our dinner-time, 
and we haven’t said half what we have to say !”’ 

So he dined with the brood of children in the large front 
room, and afterwards Alice walked down the lane with him. 

“J hope you are going to stay here?” she asked warmly. 

“Oh, I don’t know! America doesn’t seem to need me,” 
he replied, endeavoring to joke; “not that I know any place 
which does. I am waiting to be called.” 

In spite of the joking manner there was sadness in the voice. 
Alice was silent for a time and then replied earnestly : — 

“Perhaps you are called here — for the present.” 

“You mean over there?’’ he asked quickly, nodding in the 
direction of Grafton. 

cc Yes | ) 

“Why do you think so?” 

“You know Isabelle really cares for you as she doesn’t 
for any one else in the world!” 

“Yes, — we have always been close.” 

“But she cares for what you think —”’ 

_ Vickers made a gesture, as if it were impossible that any 
one could do that. 

_ “Yes,” Alice continued gently; “a woman never gets 
wholly away from the influence of one she has admired as 
Isabelle admired you.” 


368 TOGETHER 


“ But one’s experience,”’ he mused, “no matter how costly 
it has been, never seems to be of any use to any one 
else.”’ 

“Can you tell— until the end? ... What we don’t see 
in life is so much more than what we see!”’ 

Vickers looked at her gratefully. He would like to feel 
that he was needed somewhere in this hurried world. 
Presently there was a childish uproar behind them, and 
Alice turned back. : 

‘““My brood is getting tempestuous; I must say good-by !” 

She held Vickers’s hand in her warm, firm grasp. 

“T hope we shall see you often. ... I think that you are 
called here!” 

Vickers returned to the Farm, thinking of Alice Johnston. 
She had given him of her peace, of her confidence, her large 
way of taking the issues of life. ‘And I used to say that she 
was a commonplace dumpy country girl!’ he mused. He 
pondered what she had spoken, —the suggestion, vague but 
comforting, of purpose, of a place for him in the world to fill. 
Just what was she thinking of? ‘“ We’ll see,’’ he murmured, 
as he mounted the steps of the terrace. As Alice had said, 
the unseen in life was so much more than the seen. 


In the formal garden the pretty little English governess was 
conducting the social game for the two girls. Marian Lane, 
having shown Delia her pony and her rabbits without 
eliciting much enthusiasm, now sat and stared at her with 
politely suppressed scorn for the dull red frock that Vickers 
had designed for his charge. 

“Have you been to dancing school?” she demanded. 

“What is that?’ Delia asked. 

She was dully uncomfortable in the company of this very 
dainty little creature, who was always dressed in delicate, 
light fabrics, and seemed to have many possessions. And 
Miss Betterton had a well-bred manner of putting the stranger 
outside the little social game. So when Delia spied Vickers, 
she cried, “There’s father!”’ and ran towards him. 


° 


TOGETHER 369 


“Uncle Vickers is not Mabel’s father,’’ Marian asserted to 
Miss Betterton. 

“Hush, dearie !”’ the well-bred Miss Betterton replied; “we 
mustn’t talk about that.” 

When Isabelle and Cairy came up to the house from their 
afternoon ride, they found Vickers playing croquet with 
Miss Betterton and the two little girls, who in his society 
were approaching something like informality in their manner 
of addressing each other. 

“He looks quite domestic,’ Cairy jeered. 

“Hello, Vick! Come over and see the horses,’’ Isabelle ° 
called. 

At the stable Marian’s new pony that Cairy had selected 
was exhibited. Lane drove up witha friend he had brought 
from the city for the week end, and the party played with 
the pony and laughed at his tricks, which Cairy showed off. 

“He looks like a cross between an Angora cat and a New- 
foundland dog,” Cairy remarked, leaning down to feel of his 
legs. As he stooped the ivory handle of a small revolver 
pushed out of the hip pocket of his riding breeches. 

“What’s that, Uncle Tom?” Marian asked, pointing to the 


pistol. 
Cairy drew out the pistol and held it up, with a slight 
flourish, — “A family weapon!”’ 


Holding the pony with one hand and pointing the revolver 
at a blossom on a magnolia tree a few paces away, he 
fired and the white petals came fluttering down. A second 
report and another blossom fell. The pony jumped and 
snorted, but it did not disturb Cairy’s aim. A third blos- 
som fell, and then he quickly shot the descending bud which 
had been cut by the previous shot. 

“Steady hand!” Lane commented. 

“Tt’s an old habit of mine to carry it and practise when I 
have a chance,” Cairy remarked, breaking the revolver. 
After extracting the shells, he handed the pistol to Isabelle. 

“Made in Paris,” she read from the chased plate. 

“Yes; it’s a pretty toy, don’t you think?” 

2B 


370 TOGETHER 


“It’s a curious shell,’’ Lane remarked, picking up one of 
the empty shells from the ground. 

“Yes, I have to have them specially made,” replied Cairy. 
' The toy was handed around and much admired. 

“But, Uncle Tom,’’ Marian asked, “why do you carry a 
pistol ?” 

“In the South gentlemen always carry pistols.” 

“Ts it very dangerous in the South?” the little girl in- 
quired. Then the older people laughed, and Cairy looked 

rather foolish. 


CHAPTER XLVI 


ISABELLE’S house appeared to Vickers more like a com- 
fortable country club er a small country inn than the home 
of a private family. ‘There were people coming and going 
all the time. Isabelle seemed at a loss without a peopled 
background. “And they are all interesting,” she said to her 
brother, with a touch of pride. “It’s the only place Dickie 
will stay in for any time, — he says I have the best collection 
of fakes he knows. But he likes to chatter with them.” 
So far as Vickers could discover there was no special principle 
of selection in the conglomerate, except the vague test of 
being “interesting.’”’ Besides Gossom and Cairy and the 
Silvers and others of their kind there were Lane’s business 
friends, officers of the railroad, and men that Lane brought 
out to golf with or ride with. ‘ We don’t go in for society,” 
Isabelle explained, affecting a stronger indifference than she 
really felt for “merely smart people.’”’ She wished her 
brother to know that she had profited by her two years of 
New York life to gather about her intellectual people, and 
there was much clever talk at the Farm, to which Vickers paid 
an amused and bewildered attention. 

From the quiet corner where Vickers looked on at the 
household these autumn days, he watched especially his 
brother-in-law. Lane could be at the Farm only for occa- 
sional days, and while there spent his time out of doors. He 
took small part in all the talk, but it amused him as might 
the vivacity of children. He left this personal side of life 
to Isabelle, content to be a passive spectator of the little game 
she was playing; while, as Vickers judged from what Gossom 
and other men said, Lane himself had a more absorbing, more 
exacting game in the city, which he was playing with eminent 
success. “He’s getting close to the king row,” Isabelle 

371 


372 TOGETHER 


remarked to Vickers. ‘He was offered the presidency of 
some road or other out West. But we couldn’t go out there 
again to live!” : 

Of all the men and women who came and went at the Farm, 
Cairy was on the most familiar footing. “ He likes to work 
here,’ Isabelle explained with pride, ‘““and he amuses John 


more than most of them. Besides he’s very useful about 


the place!” Surely Cairy was pleasantly installed, as 
Conny would have said. He was delightful with the gov- 
erness, who admired his light conversation, and he selected 
the pony for Molly, and taught her how to fall off grace- 


fully. At domestic moments, which were rare, he effaced 


himself. He had a curious position in the household that 
puzzled Vickers. He was accepted,—the wheels ran 
around him. Isabelle treated him with a jesting, frank 
intimacy, very much as she treated her brother. And 
Lane, Vickers decided, had distinctly more use for the limp- 
ing Southerner than he had for most of the people at the 
house, including his brother-in-law. Cairy was so completely 
out of Lane’s world of men that there were no standards 
of comparison for him. 

“Tommy distracts John,” Isabelle explained to Vickers. 
“Tf he only could-play golf, I suspect John would steal him 
from me.” , 

As the weeks passed, however, Cairy was drawn to the 
city for longer intervals. The new play had not been a 
“Broadway success,”’ in fact had been taken off after a short 
run, and Cairy’s money affairs were again becoming pre- 
carious, much to Isabelle’s frank concern. ‘It’s the wretched 
condition of the theatre in our country,” she complained; 
“to think that a few miserable newspaper writers can 
ruin the chances of a dramatist’s being heard! The managers 
become panicky, if it doesn’t go at once in New York. 
; There is a chance that they will put it on again some- 
where West. But Tom hasn’t much hope.” 

“It was a poor play,’”’ Fosdick asserted flatly. “And if 
you hadn’t heard it line by line from Tommy, you’d know it.” 


TOGETHER 373 


“No,” Isabelle protested; “it’s lots cleverer than most 
things.” 

“T do not know howit may be with the theatre,’”’ Gossom put 
in at this point, “but more literature is produced in America 
to-day than at any other time in the world’s history !”’ 

(74 Oh ! he 

“J don’t mean mere rhetoric, college writing,’’ Gossom went 
on dogmatically; “but literature, things with blood to them 
in the language people use. Why, in the story contest for 
the People’s there were at least fourteen masterpieces sub- 
mitted, and not one of them had any-reference to Europe, 
or showed the least trace of what college professors call style!” 
He turned triumphantly to Vickers, towhom he had previously 
expressed his conviction that America was the future home 
of all the arts. This was an item in his patriotic creed. 

“Fourteen masterpieces, —really !”’ drawled Fosdick; “and 
how much a masterpiece, please? I must send you mine.” 

They had heard a good deal this week about the famous 
story contest for the People’s. Gossom, ignoring the gibe, 
continued : — 

“We publish every month real literature, the kind that 
comes from the heart, the stuff of real human lives. I am 
tired of this silly whine about the lack of opportunities for 
genius in our country.” 

“Tt’s hard on Tommy, all the same,” Isabelle concluded 
irrelevantly. 


When Isabelle moved to New York for the winter, Vickers 
took Delia Conry West, and on his return after a few days 
in the city went up to the Farm, where Miss Betterton and 
Marian were still staying. He felt relieved “to get back 
once more in the country that was now beginning its quiet 
preparation for winter. New York had overwhelmed him. 
And he could not but see that in the city he was something 
of a problem to his beautiful sister. She would not hear of 
his going to a hotel, and yet he was in the way. Vickers was 
not one to make an,impression. And one must make an 


O74 TOGETHER 


impression of some sort in Isabelle’s world. “ He’s quaint, 
your brother,’ one of her friends said. ‘ But he’s locked 
up and the key is lost. Most people won’t take the time to 
hunt for keys or even open doors.” 

If he had been more the artist, had some réclame from his 
music or his father’s money, he would have fitted in. Buta 
subdued little man with a sandy beard, sunken eyes, and 
careless clothes, — no, he was queer, but not “interesting ”’! 
And Isabelle, in spite of her strong sisterly loyalty, was re- 
lieved when sho saw him off at the station. 

“Tt’s nice to think of you, Vickie, snugged away in the 
country, going around in your velveteens with a pipe in your 
mouth. Keep an eye on Molly and don’t flirt with Miss 
Betterton. I shall run up often, and you must come down 
for the opera when you want to hear some music.” 

So Vickers betook himself to his seclusion. And when he 
did run down for the opera, he found himself jostled in a 
worse jam of Isabelle’s occupations than before. Although 
she had just recovered from her yearly attack of grippe, and 
felt perpetually tired and exhausted, she kept up with her 
engagement list, besides going once a week to her boys’ club, 
where Cairy helped her. Seeing her tired, restless face, 
Vickers asked her why she did it all. 

“T should die if I sat back!” she answered irritably. 
“But Pll go up to the Farm with you for a day or two... . 
There’s the masseuse — you'll find some cigarettes in the 
drawer — don’t forget we dine early.” 

When they reached the Farm the her ‘afternoon, little 
Marian met them in the hall, dressed like a white doll. 
“How do you do, Mamma?” ate said very prettily. “Iam 
so glad to see you.”’ And she held up her face to be kissed. 
The little girl had thought all day of her mother’s coming, 
but she had not dared to ask the governess to meet her at 


the station; for “Mamma has not arranged it so.” Isa- — 


belle looked at her daughter critically, and said in French 
to the English governess, “Too pale, my darling, — does 
she take her ride each day?” 


TOGETHER O75 


Everything about the child’s life was perfectly arranged, 
all thought out, from her baths and her frocks and her meals 
to the books she read and the friends she should have. But 
to Vickers, who stood near, it seemed a ULES meeting be- 
tween mother and child. 

That evening as Isabelle lay with a new novel before the 
blazing fire, too listless to read, Vickers remarked : — 

“A month of this would make you over, sis!” 

“A month! I couldn’t stand it a week, even with you, 
Bud!” 

“You can’t stand the other.” 

“Come! The rest cure idea is exploded. The thing to 
do nowadays is to vary your pursuits, employ different sets 
of nerve centres!” Isabelle quoted the famous Potts with a 
mocking smile. ‘ You should see howl! vary my activities, — 
I use a different group of cells every half hour. You don’t 
know how well I look after the family, too. I don’t neglect 
my job. Aren’t you comfortable here?. Mary cooks very 
well, I think.” 


“Oh, Mary is all right. . . . You may shift the batteries, 
Belle, but you are burning up the wires, all the same.’’ 
“Let ’em burn, then, — I’ve got to live! ... You see, 


Vickie, I am not the little girl you remember. I’ve grown 
up! When I was down after Marian came, I did such a lot 
of thinking. ... I was simple when I married, Vick. 
I thought John and I would spoon out the days, — at least 
read together and be great chums. But it didn’t turn out 
that way; you can’t live that sort of life these days, and 
it would be stupid. Each one has to develop his talent, 
you see, and then combine the gifts. John thinks and 
breathes the railroad. And when he’s off duty, he wants to 
exercise or go to the theatre and see some fool show. That’s 
natural, too, — he works hard. But I can’t do his.things, 
—so I do my things. He doesn’t care. ... To tell the 
truth, Vick, I suspect John wouldn’t miss me before the 
month’s bills were due, if I should elope to-night !”’ 
“T am not so sure, Belle.” 


376 TOGETHER 


“Of course —don’t I know? That must be the case 
with most marriages, and it’s a good thing, perhaps.” 

Vickers suggested softly, “The Colonel’s way was good, 
too.” 

“Women didn’t expect much those days. They do now. 
Even the architects recognize the change in our habits.” 

_ “JT don’t believe the architects have made any changes for 
Alice.” 

“Oh, Alice!’’ Isabelle pished. “She is just a mother.” 

“And the millions of others, men and women?” 

“They copy those on top as fast as they can; the simple 
life is either compulsory or an affectation. ... I don’t 
care for the unexpressive millions!” 

(A Cairy phrase — Vickers recognized the mint.) 

Isabelle rose, and drawing aside the curtains, looked out 
at the snowy gardens. 

“See how stunning the poplars are against the white back- 
ground! Do you remember, Vick, when we ran away from 
school and came up here together and spent two nights while 
they were telegraphing all over for us? What a different 
world! ... Well, good night, Buddie, — I must sleep up.” 

Yes, thought Vickers, as he lighted another cigarette, what 
a different world! That summed up the months since he had 
taken the steamer at Cherbourg. And what different people! 
Had he stood still while Isabelle and her friends had ex- 
panded, thrown off limitations? For her and the many others 
like her the intoxicating feast of life seemed to have been 
spread lavishly. With full purses and never sated appetites 
they rushed to the tables, —all running, out of breath, scent- 
ing opportunities, avid to know, to feel, to experience! 
“We are passing through another renaissance,”’ as Gossom 
had pompously phrased it. But with what a difference! 

To-night as Vickers looked across the still white fields from 
his bedroom window, he was less concerned with the national 
aspect of the case than with what this renaissance meant to 
his sister. Even with the aid of the great Potts she could 
never keep the nerve-racking pace that she had set herself. 


TOGETHER 377 


And yet in actual expenditure of force, either mental or 
physical, what Isabelle did or any of her acquaintance did 
was not enough to tire healthy, full-grown women. There 
was maladjustment somewhere. What ailed this race that 
was so rapidly becoming neurasthenic as it flowered ? 

One thing was plain, — that so far as emotional satisfac- 
tion went Isabelle’s marriage was null, merely a convention 
like furniture. And John, as Vickers recognized in spite of 
his brother-in-law’s indifference to him, was a good husband. 
Fortunately Isabelle, in spite of all her talk, was not the kind 
to fill an empty heart with another love. ... A suspicion 
of that had crossed his mental vision, but had faded almost 
at once. ... Isabelle was another sort! 


CHAPTER XLVII 


ISABELLE had agreed to stay out the week with Vickers, and 
in spite of her restlessness, her desire to be doing something 
new, the old self in her — the frank, girlish, affectionate 
self — revived, as it always did when she was alone with her 
brother. He said: — 

“T am coming to agree with Potts, Isabelle; you need 
to elope.” 

As she looked up, startled, he added, “With me! I'll 
take you to South America and bring you back a new woman.” 

“South America, — no thanks, brother.” 

‘Then stay here.’”’... : . 

That evening Isabelle was called to the telephone, and 
when she came back her face was solemn. 

“Percy Woodyard died last night, — pneumonia after 
grippe. Too bad! I haven’t seen him this winter; he 
has been very delicate. . . . I must go in for the funeral.” 

“J thought you and Cornelia were intimate,’ Vickers 
remarked; “but I haven’t heard you mention her name since 
I’ve been home.” 

“We were, at first; but I haven’t seen much of her the last 
two years. ... Too bad — poor Percy! Conny has killed 
him.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Oh, she’s worked him to death,— made him do this and 
that. Tom says—” Isabelle hesitated. 

“What does Tom say ?” 

“Oh, there was a lot of talk about something he did, — 
went off to Europe two years ago, and let some politicians 
make money — I don’t know just what. But he’s not been 
the same since, — he had to drop out of polities.” 

378 


TOGETHER 379 


This and something more Isabelle had learned from Cairy, 
who had heard the gossip among men. Woodyard was too 
unimportant a man to occupy the public eye, even when it 
was a question of a “gigantic steal,’ for more than a few 
brief hours. By the time the Woodyards had returned from 
that journey to Europe, so hastily undertaken, the public 
had forgotten about the Northern Mill Company’s franchise. 
But the men who follow things and remember, knew; and 
Perey Woodyard, when he sailed up the bay on his return in 
October, realized that politically he was buried, — that is, in 
the manner of politics he cared about. And he could never 
explain, not to his most intimate friend, how he had happened 
to desert his post, to betray the trust of men who trusted 
him. It was small satisfaction to believe that it would all 
have happened just as it had, even if he had been there to 
block the path of the determined majority. 

When, towards the end of their stay abroad, a letter had 
come from the Senator in regard to “that post in the diplo- 
matic service,’ Percy had flatly refused to consider it. 

“But why, Percy?” his wife had asked gently, — she was 
very sweet with him since their departure from New York. 
“We can afford it, — you know my property is paying very 
well.” 

In the look that Percy gave her, Conny saw that her 
husband had plumbed her farther than she had ever dreamed 
him capable of doing, and she trembled. 

“Tam going back to New York to practise my profession,” 
Percy said shortly. ‘And we shall live henceforth on my 
earnings, solely.” 

So he had gone back to his office and taken up his practice. 
He was a delicate man, and the past year had strained him. 
His practice was not large or especially profitable. The 
franchise scandal stood in his way, and though he succeeded in 
securing some of the corporation practice that he had once 
scorned, his earnings were never sufficient to support the 
establishment Conny had created. Infact that able mistress 
of domestic finance increased the establishment by buying a 


380 TOGETHER 


place at Lancaster for their country home. She was weaving 


a new web for her life and Percy’s, the political one having 
failed, and no doubt she would have succeeded this time in 
making the strands hold, had it not been for Percy’s deli- 
cate health. He faded out, the inner fire having been 
quenched. . .. 

At the funeral Isabelle was surprised to see Cairy. With- 
out knowing anything exactly about it, she had inferred 
that in some way Conny had treated Tom “badly,” and she 
had not seen him the last times she had been at the Wood- 
yards’. But that had not been lately. Somehow they had 
drifted apart these last two years, — their paths had diverged 
in the great social whirlpool ever more and more, though they 
still retained certain common friends, like the Silvers, who 
exchanged the current small gossip of each other’s doings. 
Isabelle was thinking of this and many other things about 
Percy and Conny as she waited in the still drawing-room for 
the funeral service to begin. She had admired Conny ex- 
travagantly at first, and now though she tried to think of her 
in her widowhood sympathetically, she found it impossible to 
pity her; while of poor Percy, who it seemed “had been too 
much under his wife’s thumb,” she thought affectionately. 

The hall and the two rooms on this floor where the 
people had gathered were exquisitely prepared. Isabelle 
could see Conny’s masterly hand in it all... . 

When the service was over, Isabelle waited to speak with 
Conny, who had asked her to stay. She saw Cairy go out 
behind the Senator, who looked properly grave and concerned, 
his black frock-coat setting off the thick white hair on the back 
of his head. 


The two men walked down the street together, and the 
Senator, who had met Cairy at the Woodyards’ a number of 
times and remembered him as an inmate of the house, fell 
to talking about the dead man. 

“Poor chap!” he said meditatively; “he had fine talents.” 

“Yes,”’ assented Cairy. “It was a shame!” His tone 


«A 


TOGETHER 381 


left it doubtful just what was a shame, but the Senator, as- 
suming that it was Percy’s untimely death, continued: — 

“And yet Woodyard seemed to lack something to give 
practical effectiveness to his abilities. He did not have the 
power to ‘seize that tide which leads men on to victory,’ — 
to size up the situation comprehensively, you know.” (The 
Senator was fond of quoting inaccurately and then para- 
phrasing from his own accumulated wisdom.) 

“T doubt very much,” he went on expansively, “if he 
would have counted for as much as he did — as he promised 
at one time to count at any rate —if it had not been for his 
wife. Mrs. Woodyard is a very remarkable woman !”’ 

“Yes, she is a strong personality, — she was the stronger 
of the two undoubtedly.” 

“She has one of the ablest business heads that I know of,” 
the Senator said emphatically, nodding his own head. “She 
should have been a man.’’ 

“One would miss a good deal—if she were a man,” 
suggested Cairy. 

“Her beauty, — yes, very striking. But she has the brain 
of a man.” 

“She is the sort that must make destiny,” agreed Cairy, 
feeling a literary satisfaction in the phrase and also pride 
that he could so generously play chorus to the Senator’s 
praise. “I fancy she will marry again!”’ 

He wondered at the moment whether the Senator might 
not venture now to break his long widowerhood. ‘The great 
man, stopping on the step of his club, remarked in a curious 
voice : — 

“T suppose so, — she is young and beautiful, and would 
naturally not consider her life ended. And yet — she is not 
exactly the sort of woman a man marries — unless he is 
very young!” 

With a nod and a little smile the Senator went briskly up 
the steps of his club. 


, 


CHAPTER XLVIII 


THE time, almost the very minute, when Isabelle realized 
‘the peculiar feeling she had come to have for Cairy, was 
strangely clear toher. Itwas shortly after Percy Woodyard’s 
funeral. She had been to Lakewood with her mother, and 
having left her comfortably settled in her favorite hotel, had 
taken the train for New York. Tom was to go to the theatre 
with her that evening, and had suggested that they dine at 
a little down-town restaurant he used to frequent when he 
was Gossom’s slave. He was to meet her at the ferry. 

She had been thinking of Percy Woodyard, of Fosdick’s 
epithet for Conny,— the Vampire. And there flashed across 
her the thought, ‘She will try to get Tom back!’ (Cairy 
had told her that he had gone to the funeral because Conny 
had written him a little note.) ‘And she is so bad for him, 
so bad for any man!’ Then looking out on the brown March 
landscape, she felt a pleasant glow of expectation, of something 
desirable in immediate prospect, which she did not at once 
attribute to anything more definite than the fact she was 
partly rested, after her two days at Lakewood. But when 
in the stream of outgoing passengers that filled the echoing 
terminal she caught sight of Tom’s face, looking expectantly 
over the heads of the crowd, a vivid ray of joy darted 
through her. 

‘He’s here!’ she thought. ‘He has come across the ferry 
to meet me!’ 

She smiled and waved the bunch of violets she was wearing 
— those he had sent down to Lakewood for her — above the 
intervening heads. 

“T thought I would snatch a few more minutes,” he -ex- 
plained, as they walked slowly through the long hall to the 
ferry. 

382 


TOGETHER 383 


The bleak March day had suddenly turned into something 
warm and gay for her; the dreary terminal was a spot to 
linger in. 

“That was very nice of you,” she replied gently, “and so 
are these !”’ 

She held up his Firs, and in the look they exchanged they 
went far in that progress of emotional friendship, the steps of 
which Cairy knew so well. ... The city was already 
lighted, tier on tier of twinkling dots in the great hives across 
the river, and as they sat out on the upper deck of the ferry for 
the sake of fresh air, Isabelle thought she had never seen the 
city so marvellous. There was an enchantment in the moving 
lights on the river, the millions of fixed lights in the long city. 
The scent of sea water reached them, strong and vital, with 
its ever witching associations of far-off lands. Isabelle 
turned and met Cairy’s eyes looking intently at her. 

“You seem so joyous to-night!” he said almost reproach- 
fully. 

She smiled at him softly. 

“But Iam! Very happy ! — it is good to be here.” 

That was it, — the nearest description of her feeling, — it 
was allso good. She wasso much alive! And asshe settled 
back against the hard seat, she thought pleasantly of the 
hours to come, the dinner, the play, and then Tom would 
take her home and they would talk it over. ... She had 
asked John to go with her. But he had declined on the ground 
that “he could not stand Ibsen,” and ‘he didn’t like that 
little Russian actress.”” Really, he was getting very lazy, Isa- 
belle had thought. Hewould probably smoke too many cigars, 
yawn over a book, and go to bed at ten. That was what he 
usually did unless he went out to a public dinner, or brought 
home work from the office, or had late business meetings. 
Nothing for his wife, she had complained once... . 

This wonderful feeling of light-hearted content continued 
as they walked through dingy streets to the old brick build- 
ing that housed the restaurant, half café, half saloon, where 
the Irish wife of the Italian proprietor cooked extraordinary 


384 TOGETHER 


Italian dishes, according to Cairy. He was pensive. He 
had been generally subdued this winter on account of the 
failure of his play. And, after all, the London opening had 
not come about. It was distinctly “his off year’? — and he 
found it hard to work. ‘ Nothing so takes the ideas out of 
you as failure,’ he had said, “and nothing makes you feel 
that you can do things like success.” 

~ Isabelle wanted to help him; she was afraid that he was 
being troubled again by lack of money. Art and letters 


were badly paid, and Tom, she was forced to admit, was not 


provident. 

“But you are happy to-night,’”’ she had said coaxingly on 
the ferry. “ Weare going to be very gay, and forget things !”’ 
That was what Tom did for her, —made her forget things, 
and return to the mood of youth where all seemed shining 
and gay. She did that for him, too, — amused and dis- 
tracted him, with her little impetuosities and girlish frank- 
ness. “ You are such a good fellow — you put heart into a 
man,” he had said. 

She was happy that she could affect him, could really 
influence a man whose talent she admired, whom she be- 
lieved in. 

“T can’t do anything to John except make him yawn!” 
she had replied. 

So to-night she devoted her happy mood to brushing away 
care from Cairy’s mind, and by the time they were seated 
at the little table with its coarse, wine-stained napkin, he 
was laughing at her, teasing her about growing stout, of 
which she pretended to be greatly afraid. 

“Oh, dear!” she sighed. “I stand after meals and roll and 
roll, and Mrs. Peet pounds me until I am black and blue, 
but it’s no use. I am gaining! Tommy, you’ll have to 
find some younger woman to say your pretty things to. 
I am growing frightfully homely! ... That’s one comfort 
with John, — he’ll never know it.” 

As the meal passed their mood became serious once more 
and tender, as it had been when they met. Cairy, lighting 


TOGETHER 385 


cigarette after cigarette, talked on, about himself. He was 
very despondent. He had made a hard fight for recognition ; 
he thought he had won. And then had come discouragement 
after discouragement. It looked as if he should be obliged 
to accept an offer from a new magazine that was advertising 
its way into notice and do some articles for them. No, he 
would not go back to be Gossom’s private mouthpiece at 
any price! 

He did not whine, — Cairy never did that exactly; but 
he presented himself for sympathy. The odds had been 
against him from the start. And Isabelle was touched by 
this very need for sunshine in the emotional temperament 
of the man. Conny had appraised the possibilities of his 
talent intelligently, believed that if properly exploited he 
should “arrive.”” But Isabelle was moved by the possibilities 
of his failure, — a much more dangerous state of mind... . 

It was long past the time for the theatre, but Cairy made 
no move. It was pleasantly quiet in the little room. The 
few diners had left long ago, and the debilitated old waiter 
had retreated to the bar. Cairy had said, “If it were not 
for you, for what you give me —” And she had thought, 
‘Yes, what I might give him, what he needs! And we are so 
happy together here.’ .. . 

Another hour passed. The waiter had returned and 
clattered dishes suggestively and departed again. Cairy 
had not finished saying all he wanted to say. ... There 
were long pauses between his words, of which even the least 
carried feeling. Isabelle, her pretty mutinous face touched 
with tenderness, listened, one hand resting on the table. 
Cairy covered the hand with his, and at the touch of his 
warm fingers Isabelle flushed. Was it the mood of this day, 
or something deeper in her nature that thrilled at this touch 
as she had never thrilled before in her life? It held her there 
listening to his words, her breath coming tightly. She 
wanted to run away, and she did not move. ... The love 
that he was telling her she seemed to have heard whispering 
in her heart long before... . 

2¢ 


386 TOGETHER 


The way to Isabelle’s heart was through pity, the desire to 
give, as with many women. Cairy felt it instinctively, and 
followed the path. Few men can blaze their way to glory, — 
but all can offer the opportunity to a woman of splendid 
sacrifice in love! 

“You know I care!” she had murmured. “But, oh, 
Tom —” That “but” and the sigh covered much, — John, 
the little girl, the world as itis. Ifshe could only give John 
what she felt she could give this man, with his pleading eyes 
that said, ‘With you I should be happy, I should conquer !’ 

“T know — I ask for nothing !”’ 

(Nothing! Oh, damnable lover’s lie! Do the Cairys 
ever content themselves with nothings ?) 

“T will do as you say — in all things. We will forget this 
talk, or I will not go back to the Farm; but I am glad we 
understand !”’ 

“No, no,” she said quickly. ‘ You must come to the 
Farm! It must be just as it has been.’”? She knew as she 
said the words that it could never be “as it had been.” 
She liked to close her eyes now to the dark future; but after 
to-day, after this new sense of tenderness and love, the old 
complexion of life-must be different. 

Cairy still held her hand. As she looked up with misty 
eyes, very happy and very miserable, a little figure came into 
the empty room followed by the waiter, and glanced aimlessly 
about for a table. 

“Vick!” Isabelle cried in astonishment. “Where did 
you come from ?”’ 

Vickers had a music score under his arm, and he tapped it 
as he stood above them at the end of their table. ‘ 

“T’ve been trying over some things with Lester at his 
rooms, and came in for a bite. I thought you were going to 
the theatre, Belle?” 

“We are!’ Cairy exclaimed, looking at his watch. “ We’ll 
about get the last act!” 

Vickers fingered his roll and did not look at Isabelle. 
Suddenly she cried : — 


TOGETHER 387 


“Take me home, Vick! ... Good-night, Tom!” 

_ She hurried nervously from the place. Vickers hailed a 
cab, and as they rode up town neither spoke at first. Then 
Vickers put his hand on hers and held it very tightly. She 
knew that he had seen — her tear-stained eyes and Cairy’s 
intent face, — that he had seen and understood. 

“Vick,” she moaned, “why is it all such a muddle? Life 
— what you mean to do, and what youcando! John doesn’t 
care, doesn’t understand. ... I’m such a fool, Vick!” 
She leaned her head on his shoulder and sobbed. He caressed 
her hand gently, saying nothing. 

He was sure now that he was called somewhere on éhis 
earth. 


CHAPTER XLIX 


WHEN Lane went West early in May for his annual inspec- 
tion trip, Isabelle moved to the Farm for the season. She was 
wan and listless. She had talked of going abroad with 
Vickers, but had suddenly given up the plan. A box of 
books arrived with her, and she announced to Vickers that 
she meant to read Italian with him; she must do something 
to kill the time. But the first.evening when she opened a 
volume of French plays, -she dropped it; books could not 
hold her attention any more. All the little details about 
her house annoyed her, — nothing went smoothly. The 
governess must be changed. Her French was horrible. 
Marian followed her mother about with great eyes, fearful 
of annoying her, yet fascinated. Isabelle exclaimed in 
sudden irritation :— 

“Haven’t you anything to do, Molly!”’ And to Vickers 
she complained: “Children nowadays seem perfectly help- 
less. Unless they are provided with amusement every min- 
ute, they dawdle about, waiting for you to do something 
for them. Miss Betterton should make Molly more inde- 
pendent.” 

And the next day in a fit of compunction she arranged 
to have a children’s party, sending the motor for some ten- 
mile-away neighbors. 

In her mood she found even Vickers unsatisfactory: 
“Now you have me here, cooped up, you don’t say a word 
to me. You are as bad as John. That portentous silence 
is a husband’s privilege, Vick. ... You and I used to 
jaser all the time. Other men don’t find me dull, anyway. 
They tell me things!” 

She pouted like a child. Vickers recalled that when she 
had said something like this one day at breakfast with 

388 








TOGETHER 389 


John and Cairy present, Lane had lifted his head from his 
plate and remarked with a quiet man’s irony: “The other 
men are specials, — they go on for an occasion. The hus-¢ 
band’s is a steady job.” 

Cairy had laughed immoderately. Isabelle had laughed 
with him, — “ Yes, I suppose you are all alike; you would 
slump every morning at breakfast.’’ 

This spring Isabelle had grown tired, even of people. 
“Conny wants to come next month, and I suppose I must 
have her. I wanted Margaret, but she has got to take the 
little boy up to some place in the country and can’t come. 
.... There’s a woman, now,” she mused to Vickers, her 
mind departing on a train of association with Margaret Pole. 
“T wonder how she possibly stands life with that husband of 
hers. He’s getting worse all the time. Drinks now! Mar- 
garet asked me if John could give him something in the 
railroad, and John sent him out to a place in the country 
where he would be out of harm. ... There’s marriage 
for you! Margaret is the most intelligent woman I know, 
and full of life if she had only half a chance to express herself. 
But everything is ruined by that mistake she made years 
ago. If I were she —”’ Isabelle waved a rebellious hand 
expressively. “I thought at one time that she was in love 
with Rob Falkner, — she saw a lot of him. But he has gone 
off to Panama. Margaret won’t say a word about him; 
perhaps she is in love with him still, — who knows!” 

One day she looked up from a book at Vickers, who was at 
the piano, and observed casually : — 

“Tom is coming up to spend June when he gets back 
from. the South.” She waited for an expected remark, and 
then added, “If you dislike him as much as you used to, 
you had better take that time for Fosdick.”’ 

“Do you want me to go?” 

“No, — only I thought it might be more comfortable for 
you oy 

“Cairy doesn’t make me uncomfortable.” 


“Oh — well, you needn’t worry about me, brother dear!” 


390 TOGETHER 


She blushed and came across the room to kiss him. “I am | 


well harnessed; I shan’t break the traces —— yet.” .. . 

It was a summerish day, and at luncheon Isabelle seemed 
less moody than she had been since her arrival. “ Let’s 
take one of our old long rides, — just ride anywhere, as we 
used to,’”’ she suggested. 

They talked of many things that afternoon, slipping back 
into the past and rising again to the present. Vickers, 
happy in her quieter, gentler mood, talked of himself, the 
impressions he had received these months in his own land. 

“What strikes me most,’ he said, “at least with the 
people that I see about you, Belle, is the sharp line between 
work and play. I see you women all at play, and I see 
the men only when they are wearily watching you play or 
playing with you. One hears so much about business in 
America. But-with you people it is as much suppressed 
as if your husbands and brothers went off to some other star 
every day to do their work and came back at night by 
air ship to see their families.” 

“Business is dull,’ Isabelle explained,—‘“ most men’s 
business. They want to forget it themselves when they 
leave the office.” 

“But it is so-much a part of life,’ Vickers protested, 
thinking of the hours and days Lane spent absorbed in affairs 
that Isabelle hadn’t the curiosity to inquire about. 

“Too much over here.” 

‘And not enough.”’ 

On their way home in ni fhe cool of the evening, over a hilly 
road through the leafing woods, their horses walked close 


together, and Isabelle, putting an arm affectionately on her — 


brother’s shoulder, mused : — 


“One feels so differently different days. Tell me, Vick, whay é 


makes the atmosphere, — the color of life in one’s mind? 
Look over there, along the river. See all the gray mist and 


up above on the mountain the purple — and to-morrow it — 


will be gone! Changing, always changing! It’s just so — 
5 | 


inside you; the color is changing all the time. . . . There is 





f 


TOGETHER 391 


the old village. It doesn’t seem to me any longer the place you 
and I lived in as boy and girl, the place I was married from.” 

“Tt is we who have changed, not Grafton.” 

“Of course; it’s what we have lived through, felt, — and 
we can’tget back! We can’t get back, — that’s thesad thing.” 

“Perhaps it isn’t best to get back altogether.”’ 

Isabelle gave him a curious glance, and then in a hard tone 
remarked, “Sometimes I think, Vick, that in spite of your 
experience you are the same soft, sentimental youth you were 
before it happened.” 

“Not quite.” 

“Did you ever regret it, Vick?” | 

“Yes,” he said bravely, “many times; but I am not so 
sure now that one can really regret anything that is done out 
of one’s full impulse.”’ 

“Well, — that was different,’’ Isabelle remarked vaguely. 
“Did you ever consider, Vick, that marriage is an awful prob- 
lem for a woman, — any woman who has individuality, who 
thinks? ... A man takes it easily. If it doesn’t fit, why 
he hangs it up in the closet, so to speak, and takes it out 
just as little as he has to. But a woman,— she must wear it 
pretty much all of the time — or give it up altogether. It’s 
unfair to the woman. If she wants to be loved, and there 
are precious few women who don’t want a man to love them, 
don’t want that first of all, and her husband hasn’t time to 
bother with love, — what does she get out of marriage? 
I know what you are going to say! John loves me, when 
he thinks about it, and I have my child, and I am happily 
placed, in very comfortable circumstances, and —”’ 

“JT wasn’t going to say that,” Vickers interrupted. 

“But,” continued Isabelle, with rising intensity, “ you know 
that has nothing to do with happiness. ... One might 
as well be married to a hitching-post as to John. Women 


simply don’t count in his life. Sometimes I wish they did — 


that he would make me jealous! Give him the railroad and 
golf and a man to talk to, and he is perfectly happy. ... 


Where do I come in?”’ 


392 TOGETHER 


“Where do you put yourself in?” 
“As housekeeper,’ she laughed, the mood breaking. 


“The Johnstons are coming next week, all eight — or is it | 
nine? — of them. I must go over and see that the place | 


is opened. ... They live like tramps, with one servant, 
but they seem very happy. He is awfully good, but dull, — 
John is a social lion compared to Steve Johnston. John 
says he’s very clever in his line. And as for Alice, she always 
was big, but she’s become enormous. I don’t suppose she 
ever thinks of anything so frivolous as a waist-line.”’ 

“T thought she had a beautiful face.” 

“Vick, I don’t believe that you know whether a woman 
has a figure! You might write a Symphonie Colossale with 
Alice and her brood as the theme.” 

“She is Woman,” suggested Vickers. 


considered the corner-stone of womanhood? Having young ?4 


“Woman!” Isabelle scoffed. “Why is vine 


Cows do that. Women are good for other things ,— inspiraé » 


tion, love, perhaps!’ She curved her pretty. lips at her 
brother mockingly. .. . | ; 

There were two telegrams at the house. Isabelle, opening 
the first, read aloud, “Reach Grafton three thirty, Tues- 
day. John,” and dropped it on the table. The other she 
did not read aloud, but telephoned an answer to the 
telegraph office. Later she remarked casually, “Tom finds 
he can get back earlier; he’ll be here by the end of the week.” 


Pe eee wie 


CHAPTER L 


“‘THERHD’S Steve,”’ Isabelle said to Vickers, “ coming across 
the meadow with his boys. He 7s an old dear, so nice and 
fatherly !” 

The heavy man was plodding slowly along the path, the 
four boys frisking around him in the tall ie grass like 
puppies. 

“He has come to see John about some business. Let us 
take the boys and have a swim in the pool!” 

Isabelle was gay and happy this morning, with one of those 
rapid changes in mood over night that had become habitual 
with her. When they returned from their romp in the 
pool, the boys having departed to the stable in search of 
further amusement, Lane and Johnston were still talking 
while they slowly paced the brick terrace. 

“Still at it!”’ exclaimed Isabelle. ‘Goodness! what can 
it be to make John talk as fast as that! Why, he hasn’t 
said half as many words to me since he’s been back. Just 
look at ’em, Vick!” 


Outside on the terrace Steve Johnston was saying, stutter- 
ing in his endeavor to get hastily all the words he needed to 
express his feelings : — 

“It’s no use, Jack! I tell you I am sick of the whole 
business. I know it’s big pay,— more than I ever expected 
to earn in my life. But Alice and I have been poor before, 
and I guess we can be poor again if it comes to that.’ 

“A man with your obligations has no right to give up such 
an opportunity.” 

“ Alice is with me; we have talked the thing all through, 
Pos oN Ne, I may be a jackass, but I can’t see it any different. 

393 


394 TOGETHER 


I don’t like the business of loading the dice, — that is all. 
I have stood behind the counter, so to speak, and seen the 
dice loaded, fifteen years. But I wasn’t responsible myself. 
Now in this new place you offer me I should be rr, —the man 
who loads.... I have been watching this thing for fifteen 
years. When I was arate clerk on the Canada Southern, 
I could guess how it was, —the little fellows paid the 
rate as published and the big fellows didn’t. Then when I 
went into the A. and P. I came a step nearer, could watch 
how it was done — didn’t have to guess. Then I went with 
the Texas and Northern as assistant to the traffic manager, 
and I loaded the dice — under orders. Now —” 

“Now,” interrupted Lane, “ you’ll take your orders from 
my office.” | 

“T know it, — that’s part of the trouble, Jack!” the 
heavy man blurted out. “ You want a safe man out there, ~ 
you say. I know what that means! I don’t want to talk | 
good to you, Jack. But you see things differently from 
MiGs 5; 
“ All tie newspaper gossip and scandal has got on your © 
nerves,’ Lane said irritably. 

“No, it hasn’t. And it isn’t any fear of being pulled up | 
before the Commission. That doesn’t mean anything to. 
me. ... No, I have seen it coming ever since I was a clerk 
at sixty a rignth. And somehow I felt if it ever got near | 
enough me so that I should have to fix the game — for that’s 
all it amounts to, Jack, and you know it — why, I should 
have to get out. At last it’s got up to me, and so I am 
getting out!” . 

The stolid man puffed with the exertion of expressing | 
himself so fully, inadequate as his confused sentences were to 
describe all that fermenting mass of observation, impression, | 
revulsion, disgust that his experience in the rate-making side 
of his employment had stored up within him the last fifteen 
years. Out of it had come a result —a resolve. And it 
was this that Lane was combating -heatedly. It was not 
merely that he liked Johnston personally and did not want 













TOGETHER 395 


him “to make a fool of himself,’’ as he had expressed it, not 
altogether because he had made up his mind that the heavy 
man’s qualities were exactly what he needed for this position 
he had offered him ; rather, because the unexpected opposition, 
Johnston’s scruples, irritated him personally. It was a part 
of the sentimental newspaper clamor, half ignorance, half 
envy, that he despised. When he had used the words, 
“womanish hysteria,’ descriptive of the agitation against 
the railroads, Steve had protested in the only humorous 
remark he was ever known to make: — 

“Do I look hysterical, Jack?”’ 

So the two men talked on. What they said would not 

have been wholly understood by Isabelle, and would not 
have interested her. And yet it contained more elements of 
pathos, of modern tragedy, than all the novels she read and 
the plays she went to see. The homely, heavy man — “ He 
looks just like a bag of meal with a yellow pumpkin on top,” 
Isabelle had said — replied to a thrust by Lane: — 
“Yes, maybe I shall fail in the lumber business. It’s 
pretty late to swap horses at forty-three. But Alice and I 
have talked it over, and we had rather run that risk than the 
other —”’ 

“You mean?” 

“That I should do what Satters of the L. P. has just testi- 
fied he’s been’ doing — under orders — to make traffic.” 

It was a shrewd blow. Satters was a clear case where the 
powerful L. P. road had been caught breaking the rate law 
by an ingenious device that aroused admiration in the 
railroad world. He had been fined a few thousand dollars, 
which was a cheap forfeit. This reference to Satters closed 
the discussion. 

“T hope you will find the lumber business all you want it 
to suit your conscience, Steve. Come in and have some 
lunch!” 

The heavy man refused, —he was in no mood for one 
of Isabelle’s luncheons, and he had but one more day of 
‘vacation. Gathering up his brood, he retraced his way 


« 


396 | TOGETHER 


across the meadow, the four small boys following in his 
track. 

“ Well!’’ exclaimed Isabelle to her husband. “ What was 
your business all about? Luncheon has been waiting half 
an hour. It was as good as a play watching you two out 
there. Steve looked really awake.’ 

“He was awake all right,’’ Lane replied. 

“Tell us all about it — there, Vick, see if he doesn’t put 
me off with ‘Just business, my dear’ !”’ | 

“Tt was just business. Steve has declined a good position 
I made for him, at nearly twice the salary he has ever 
earned.”’ 

“ And all those boys to put through college!” 

“What was it?” Vickers asked. 

Something made Lane unusually communicative, — his 
irritation with Steve or his wife’s taunt. 

“Did you ever hear of the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion?’? he asked his brother-in-law, in a slightly ironical 
tone. And he began to state the situation, and stated it 
remarkably well from his point of view, explaining the spirit 
of interference that had been growing throughout the coun- 
try with railroad management, corporation management in 
_general, —its disastrous effect if persisted in, and also 
“emotionalism” in the press. He talked very ably, and held 
his wife’s attention. Isabelle said: — ‘ 

“ But it was rather fine of Steve, if he felt that way!” 

“He’s kept his mouth shut fifteen years.” 

“He’s slow, is Steve, but when he sees — he acts!” 

Vickers said nothing, but a warm sense of comfort spread 
through his heart, as he thought, ‘Splendid! —she did 
that for him, Alice.’ 

‘“T hope he won’t come to grief in the lumber business,” 
Lane concluded. ‘Steve is not fitted for general business, 
And he can’t have much capital. Only their savings.” 


Then he yawned and went to the library for a cigar, dis- — 


missing Steve and his scruples and the railroad business 
altogether from his mind, in the manner of a well-trained 


TOGETHER 397 


man of affairs, who has learned that it is a useless waste of 
energy to speculate on what has been done and to wonder 
why men should feel and act as they do feel and act. 

And Isabelle, with a “It will come hard on Alice!’? — 
went off to cut some flowers for the vases, still light-hearted, 
humming a gay little French song that Tom had taught 
her. 


If it were hard for Alice Johnston, the large woman did 
not betray it when Vickers saw her a few days later. With 
the help of her oldest boy she was unharnessing the horse from 
the Concord buggy. | 

“You see,” she explained, as Vickers tried to put the 
head halter on the horse, ‘“‘we are economizing on Joe, who 
used to do the chores when he did not forget them, which 
was every other day!”’ 

When Vickers referred to Steve’s new business, she said 
cheerfully : — 

“T think there is a good chance of success. The men 
Steve is going in with have bought a large tract of land in 
the southern part of Missouri. They have experience in 
the lumber business, and Steve is to look after the city end, — 
he’s well known in St. Louis.” 

“T do so hope it will go right,”” Vickers remarked, wishing 
that in some way he could help in this brave venture. 

“Yes!’’ Alice smiled. “It had to be, this risk, — you 
know there come times when there is only one thing to do. 
If Steve hadn’t taken the step, left the railroad, I think 
that neither of us would have been happy afterwards. But 
these are anxious days for us. We have put all the 
money in our stocking into it, seven thousand dollars; 
all we have in the world but this old farm, which the 
Colonel gave me. I wanted to mortgage the farm, but 
Steve wouldn’t let me. So all our eggs are in one basket. 
Not so many eggs, but we can’t spare one!’ 

‘ She laughed serenely, with a broad sense of humor over 
the family venture, yet with a full realization of its risk. 


398 TOGETHER 


Vickers marvelled at her strong faith in Steve, in the future, 
in life. As he had said to Isabelle, this was Woman, one 
who had learned the deeper lessons of life from her children, 
from her birth-pangs. 

She took him into the vegetable garden which she and 
the children had planted. ‘‘We are truck-farmers,” she 
explained. ‘I have the potatoes, little Steve the corn, 
Ezra the peas, and so on to Tot, who looks after the carrots 
and beets because they are close to the ground and don’t 
need much attention. The family is cultivating on-shares.”’ 

They walked through the rows of green vegetables that 
were growing lustily in the June weather, and then turned 
back to the house. Alice stopped to fasten up a riotous 
branch of woodbine that had poked its way through a 
screen. 

“Tf the worst comes to the worst, I shall turn farmer in 
earnest and raise vegetables for my wealthy neighbors. 
And there is the orchard! We have been poor so much of 
the time that we know what it means.... I have no doubt 
it will come out all right, — and we don’t worry, Steve and 
I. We aren’t ambitious enough to worry.” 

It was a pleasant place, the Price farm, tucked away in 
a fold of gentle hills, at the end of a grassy lane. The bees 
hummed in the apple trees, and the June breeze swayed 
through the house, where all the windows and doors were 
open. Vickers, looking at the calm, healthy woman sitting 
beside him on the porch, did not pity the Johnstons, nor fear 
for them. Alice, surely, was the kind that no great mis- 
fortune could live with long. 

“T am really a farmer, — it’s all the blood in my veins,” 
Alice remarked. ‘‘And when I get back here summers, 
the soil seems to speak to me. I’ve known horses and cows 
and pigs and crops and seasons for centuries. It’s only 
skin deep, the city coating, and is easily scraped off... . 
Your father, Vickers, was a wise man. He gave me the 
exact thing that was best for me when he died, — this old 
farm of my people. Just as he had given me the best thing 


TOGETHER 399 


in my life, — my education. If he had done more, I should 
be less able to get along now.” 

They had dinner, a noisy meal at which the children 
served in turns, Alice sitting like a queen bee at the head 
of the table, governing the brood. Vickers liked these 
midday meals with the chattering, chirping youngsters. 

“And how has it been with the music?” Alice asked. 
“Have you been able to work? You spent most of the 
winter up here, didn’t you?” 

“T have done some things,’ Vickers said; “not much. 
I am not at home yet, and what seems familiar is this, the 
past. But I shall get broken in, no doubt. And,’ he added 
thoughtfully, “I have come to see that this is the place for 
me — for the present.”’ 

“T am glad,” she said softly. 


CHAPTER LI 

As Vickers crossed the village on his way back from the 
‘Johnstons’, Lane emerged from the telegraph office and 
joined him. On the rare occasions when they were thrown 
together alone like this, John Lane’s taciturnity reached to 
positive dumbness. Vickers supposed that his brother-in- 
law disliked him, possibly despised him. It was, however, 
a case of absolute non-understanding. It must remain for- 
ever a problem to the man with a firm grasp on concrete 
fact how any one could do what Vickers had done, except 
through ‘““woman-weadkness,’’ for which Lane had no tolerance. 
Moreover, the quiet little man, with his dull eyes, who 
moved about as if his faculties had been forgotten in the 
morning when he got up, who could sit for hours dawdling 
at the piano striking chords, -or staring at the keys, seemed 


merely queer to the man of action. ‘‘I wish he would do 
something,” Isabelle had said of Vickers, using his own 
words of her, and her husband had replied, ‘Do? . . . What 
could he do!” 


“T’ve just been to see Alice,” Vickers remarked timidly. 
“She takes Steve’s change of business very calmly.” 

“She doesn’t know,” Lane answered curtly. “And I 
am afraid he doesn’t either.” 

He let the topic drop, and they walked on in silence, 
turning off at the stile into an old by-path that led up to 
the new house through a small grove of beeches, which 
Isabelle had saved at her brother’s plea from the destructive 
hand of the landscape artist. Vickers was thinking about 
Lane. He understood his brother-in-law as little as the 
latter comprehended him. He had often wondered these 
past months: ‘Doesn’t he see what is happening to Isa- 
belle? Doesn’t he care! It isn’t surely helpless yet, — 

400 


| 
| 





TOGETHER 401 


they aren’t so wholly incompatible, and Isabelle is frank, 
is honest!’ But if Lane saw the state of affairs in his house, 
he never showed that he perceived it. His manner with 
his wife was placid, — although, as Isabelle often said, he 
was very little with her. But that state of separation in 
which the two lived seemed less due to incompatibility than 
to the accident of the way they lived. Lane was a very 
busy man with much on his mind; he had no time for emo- 
tional tribulations. 

Since his return from the West — these five days which 
he had allowed himself as vacation — he had been irritable 
at times, easily disturbed, as he had been with Steve John- 
ston, but never short with his wife. Vickers supposed 
that some business affair was weighing on him, and as was 
his habit he locked it up tight within... . 

And Lane would never have told what it was that gnawed 
at him, last of all to Vickers. It was pride that made him 
seem not to see, not to know the change that had come 
into his house. And something more, which might be 
found only in this kind of American gentleman, — a deep well 
of loyalty to his wife, a feeling of: ‘What she wishes, 
no matter what it may be to me!’ ‘I shall trust her to 
the last, and if she fails me, I will still trust her to be 
true to herself.’ A chivalry this, unsuspected by Vickers! 
Something of that old admiration for his wife which made 
him feel that he should provide her with the opportunities 
she craved, that somehow she had stooped in marrying him, 
still survived in spite of his successful career. And love? 
To define the sort of sentiment Lane at forty-two had for 
his wife, modified by his activities, by his lack of children, 
by her evident lack of passion for him, would not be an 
easy matter. But that he loved her more deeply than 
mere pride, than habit would account for, was sure. In that 
afterglow between men and women which comes when the 
storms of life have been lived through, Lane might be 
found a sufficient lover... . 

As they entered the narrow path that led through the 

2D 


402 TOGETHER 


beechwood, Lane stepped aside to allow Vickers to precede 
him. The afternoon sun falling on the glossy new leaves 
made a pleasant light. They had come to a point in the 
path where the western wing of the house was visible through 
the trees when suddenly Vickers stopped, hesitated, as if 
he would turn back, and said aloud hastily: “I always 
like this side of the house best, —don’t you? It is quieter, 
less open than the south facade, more intime —”’ He talked 
on aimlessly, blocking the path, staring at the house, 
gesticulating. When he moved, he glanced at Lane’s 
Facey. 4 

Just below in a hollow where a stone bench had been 
placed, Isabelle was sitting with Cairy, his arm about her, 
her eyes looking up at him, something gay and happy in the 
face like that little French song she was singing these days, 
as if a voice had stilled the restless craving in her, had 
touched to life that dead pulse, which had refused to beat 
for her husband. ... This was what Vickers had seen, 
and it was on his lips to say, ‘“‘ When did Cairy come? Isa- 


belle did not tell me.’ But instead he had faltered out — 


nonsense, while the two, hearing his voice, betook themselves 
to the upper terrace. Had her husband seen them? Vickers 
wondered. Something in the man’s perfect control, his 
manner of listening to Vickers’s phrases, made him feel that 
he had seen — all. But Lane in his ordinary monosyllabic 
manner pointed to a nest of ground sparrows beside the 
path. ‘‘Guess we had better move this establishment to 
a safer place,” he remarked, as he carefully put the nest 
into the thicket. | 
When they reached the hall, Isabelle, followed by Cairy, 
entered from the opposite door. ‘Hello, Tom; when did you 
get in?’’ Lane asked in his ordinary equable voice. “I sent 
your message, Isabelle.’”’ And he went to dress for dinner. 


The dinner that night of the three men and the woman 
was tense and still at first. All the radiance had faded 
from Isabelle’s face, leaving it white, and she moved as if 


so 


TOGETHER 403 


She were numb. Vickers, watching her face, was sad at 
heart, miserable as he had been since he had seen her and 
Cairy together. Already it had gone so far! ... Cairy 
was talkative, as always, telling stories of his trip to the 
South. At some light jeer over the California railroad situ- 
ation, Lane suddenly spoke: — 

“That is only one side, Tom. There is another.”’ 

Ordinarily he would have laughed at Cairy’s flippant 
handling of the topics of the day. But to-night he was 
ready to challenge. 

‘The public doesn’t want to hear the other side, it seems,” 
Cairy retorted quickly. 

Lane looked at him slowly as ie might at a mosquito 
that he purposed to crush. “I think that some of the public 
wants to hear all Bides ” he replied quietly. ‘Let us see 
what the facts are.” .. 

To-night he did not intend to be silenced by trivialities. 
Cairy fad given him an opening on his own ground, — the 
_ vast field of fact. And he talked astonishingly well, with 
a grip not merely of. the much-discussed railroad situation, 
but of business in general, economic conditions in America 
and abroad, —the trend of development. He talked in 
a large and leisurely way all through the courses, and when 
Cairy would interpose some objection, his judicious consid- 
eration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then tossed 
it high on the shore of his buttressed conclusions. Vick- 
ers listened in astonishment to the argument, while Isa- 
belle, her hands clasped tight before her, did not eat, but 
shifted her eyes from her husband’s face to Cairy’s and back 
again as the talk flowed. 

... “And granted,” Lane said by way of conclusion, 
having thoroughly riddled Cairy’s contentions, “that in 
some cases there has been trickery and fraud, is that any 
reason why we should indict the corporate management 
of all great properties? Even if all the law-breaking of 
which our roads are accused could be proved to be true, 
nevertheless any philosophic investigator would conclude 


404 TOGETHER 


that the good they have done —the efficient service for 
civilization — far outbalances the wrong — ” 

“Useful thieves and parasites!’’ Cairy interposed. 

“Yes, —if you like to put it in those words,’’ Lane resumed 
quietly. ‘The law of payment for service in this world of 
ours is not a simple one. For large services and great sac- 
rifices, the rewards must be large. For large risks and 
daring efforts, the pay must be alluring. Every excel- 
lence of a high degree costs, — every advance is made at 
the sacrifice of a lower order of good.” 

‘“Tsn’t that a pleasant defence for crime?” Isabelle asked. 

Lane looked at his wife for a long moment of complete 
silence. 

“Haven’t you observed that people break laws, and seem 
to feel that they are justified in doing so by the force of 
higher laws?” 

Isabelle’s eyes fell. He had seen, Vickers knew, — not 
only this afternoon, but all along! ... Presently they 
rose from the table, and as they passed out of the room Isa- 
belle’s scarf fell from her neck. Lane and Cairy stooped 
to pick it up. Cairy had his hands on it first, but in some 
way it was the husband who took possession of it and handed 
it to the wife. Her hand trembled as she took it from him, 
and she hurried to her room. 

“Tf you are interested in this matter of the Pacific roads, 
Tom,” Lane continued, handing Cairy the cigarette box, 
“T will have my secretary look up the data and send it 
out here. ... You will be with us some time, I suppose ?”’ 

Cairy mumbled his thanks. 

After this scene Vickers felt nothing but admiration for 
his brother-in-law. The man knew the risks. He cared, — 
yes, he cared! Vickers was very sure of that. At dinner it 
had been a sort of modern duel, as if, with perfect courtesy 
and openness, Lane had taken the opportunity to try con- 
clusions with the rival his wife had chosen to give him, — 
to tease him with his rapier, to turn his mind to her gaze. 

And yet, even he must know how useless victory 


TOGETHER pce AO 


was to him, victory of this nature. Isabelle did not love 
Cairy because of his intellectual grasp, though in the matters 
she cared for he seemed brilliant. 

‘It’s to be a fight between them,’ thought Vickers. ‘He 
is giving the other one every chance. Oh, it is magnificent, 
this way of winning one’s wife. But the danger in it!’ 
And Vickers knew now that Lane scorned to hold a woman, 
even his wife, in any other way. His wife should not be 
bound to him by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their 
child. Nor would he plead for himself in this contest. 
Against the other man, he would play merely himself, — 
the decent years of their common life, their home, her own 
heart. And he was losing, — Vickers felt sure of that. 


.  ae 


CHAPTER LII 


_ Di he know that he had virtually lost when at the end 
of his brief vacation he went back to the city, leaving his 
rival alone in the field? During those tense days Vickers’s 
admiration for the man grew. He was good tempered 
and considerate, even of Cairy. Lane had always been a 
pleasant host, and now instead of avoiding Cairy he seemed 
to seek his society, made an effort to talk to him about his 
work, and advised him shrewdly in a certain transaction 
with a theatrical manager. 

“Tf she should go away with Cairy,” Vickers said to him- 
self, “he will look out for them always!”’ 

Husband and wife, so Vickers judged, did not talk to- 
gether during all this time. Perhaps they did not dare to 
meet the issue openly. At any rate when Isabelle proposed 
driving John to the station the last night, he said kindly, 
“Tt’s raining, my dear, —I1 think you had better not.” So 


re weer 


he kissed her in the hall before the others, made some com- — 


monplace suggestion about the place, and with his bag in 
hand left, nodding to them all as he got into the carriage. 
Isabelle, who had appeared dazed these days, as if, her heart 
and mind occupied in desperate inner struggle, her body 
lived mechanically, left the two men to themselves and 


went to her room. And shortly afterwards Cairy, who had — 
become subdued, thoughtful, pleaded work and went up- | 


stairs. 


When Vickers rose early the next morning, the country 


was swathed in a thin white mist. The elevation on which — 


the house stood just pierced the fog, and, here and there 


below, the head of a tall pine emerged. Vickers had slept | 


badly with a suffocating sense of impending danger. When he 
406 





TOGETHER 407 


stepped out of the drawing-room on the terrace, the coolness 
of the damp fog and the stillness of the June morning not 
yet broken by bird notes soothed his troubled mind. All 
this silent beauty, serenely ordered nature — and tumul- 
tuous man! Out of the earthy elements of which man 
was compounded, he had sucked passions which drove 
him hither and yon.... As he walked towards the 
west garden, the window above the terrace opened, and 
Isabelle, dressed in her morning clothes, looked down on her 
brother. 

“T heard your step, Vick,’’ she said in a whisper. Her 
face in the gray light was colorless, and her eyes were dull, 
veiled. “Wait for me, Bud!” | 

In a few moments she appeared, covered with a gray 
cloak, a soft saffron-colored veil drawn about her head. 
Slipping one hand under his arm, — her little fingers tight- 
ening on his flesh, — she led the way through the garden 
to the beech copse, which was filled with mist, then down 
to the stone bench, where she and Cairy had sat that other 
afternoon. 

“How still it is!’’ she murmured, shivering slightly. 
She looked back to the copse, vague in the mist, and 
‘said: “Do you remember the tent we had here in the 
summers? We slept in it one night.... It was then 
I used to say that I was going to marry you, brother, and 
live with you for always because nobody else could be half 
so nice.... I wish I had! Oh, how I wish I had! We 
should have been happy, youand I. And it would have been 
better for both of us.” 

She smiled at him wanly. He understood the reference 
she made to his misadventure, but said nothing. Suddenly 
she leaned her head on his shoulder. 

“Vick, dear, do you think that any one could care enough 
to forgive everything? Do you love me enough, so you 
would love me, no matter what I did? ... That’s real 
love, the only kind, that loves because it must and forgives 
because it loves! Could you, Vick? Could you?” 


408 TOGETHER 


Vickers smoothed back her rumpled hair and drew the 
veil over it. 

“You know that nothing would make any difference to 
me.” 

“ Ah, you don’t know! But perhaps you could —”’ Then 
raising her head she spoke with a harder voice. “But 
that’s weak. One must expect to pay for what one does, 
— pay everything. Oh, my God!” 

The fog had retreated slowly from their level. They stood 
on the edge looking into its depth. Suddenly Vickers ex- 
claimed with energy : — 

“You must end this, Isabelle! It will kill you.” 

“T wish it might!” 


“End it!” and he added slowly, “Send him away—or | 


let me take you away!”’ 

“JT —I—can’t, — Vick!” she cried. “It has got be- 
yond me.... It is not just for myself —just me. It’s 
for him, too. He needs me. I could do so much for him! 
And here I can do nothing.” 

“And John?” 

“Oh, John! He doesn’t care, really —” 

“Don’t say that!” 

“Tf he did —” 

“Tsabelle, he saw you and Tom, here, the afternoon Tom 
came!” 

She flushed and drew eran away from her brother’s 
arms. 


“T know it —it was the first time that —that anything — 


happened! ... If he cared, why didn’t he say something 
then, do something, strike me — ”’ 

“That is not right, Belle; you know he is not that kind 
of animal.”’ 

“If a man cares for a woman, he hasn’t such godlike con- 
trol! ... No, John wants to preserve appearances, to 
have things around him smooth, — he’s too cold to care!” 

“That’s ungenerous.” 

“Haven’t I lived with him years enough to know what 


hast LS 


TOGETHER 409 


is in his heart? He hates scandal. That’s his nature, — 
he doesn’t want unpleasant words, a fuss. There won’t 
be any, either.... But I’m not the calculating kind, 
Vick. If I do it, I do it for the whole world to know and 
to see. I’m not Conny, —no sneaking compromises; I’ll do 
it as you did it, — for the whole world to see and know.” 

“But you’ll not do it!” 

“You think I haven’t the courage? You don’t know 
me, Vick. I am not a girl any longer. I am thirty-two, 
and I know life now, my life at any rate... . It was all 
wrong between John and me from the beginning, —yes, 
from the beginning !”’ 

“What makes you say that! You don’t really believe 
it in your heart. You loved John when you married him. 
You were happy with him afterwards.” 

“T don’t believe that any girl, no matter what experience she 
has had, can really love a man before she is married to him. I 
was sentimental, romantic, and I thought my liking for a man 
was love. I wanted to love, —all girls do. But I didn’t 
know enough to love. It is all blind, blind! I might have 
had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for 
John before. .. . Then comes marriage, and it’s luck, all 
luck, whether love comes, whether it is right — the thing for 
you—the only one. Sometimes it is, — often enough 
for those who don’t ask much, perhaps. But it was wrong 
for John and me. I knew it from the first days, — those 
when we tried to think we were happiest. I have never 
confessed this to a human being, —never to John. But 
it was so, Vick! I didn’t know then what was the matter — 
why it was wrong. Butawomansuspectsthen. ... Those 
first days I was wretched, —I wanted to cry out to him: 
‘Can’t you see it is wrong? You and I must part; our 
way is not the same!’ But he seemed content. And there 
was father and mother and everything to hold us to the 
mistake. And of course I felt that it might come in time, 
that somehow it was my fault. I even thought that love 
as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for a woman, 


410 TOGETHER 


So the child came, and I went through the motions. 
And the gap grew between us each year as I came to be 
a woman. I saw the gap, but I thought it was always so, 
almost always, between husbands and wives, and I went 
on going through the motions. ... That was why I was 
ill, — yes, the real reason, because we were not fitted to be 
married. Because I tried to do something against nature, 
—tried to live married to a man who wasn’t really my 
husband !” | 


Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself . 


had she said it all,—summed up that within her which 
must justify her revolt. Vickers felt the hot truth to her 
of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough? 

Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if com- 
pelled : — 


“But it might have gone on so until the end, until I © 


died. Perhaps I could have got used to it, living like that, 
and fussed around like other women over amusements and 


charities and houses, — all the sawdust stuffing of life — — 
and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known.” — 


She drew a deep breath. 


“But you see—I know now — what the other is! I © 
have known since”’ — her voice sank to a whisper — “that — 


afternoon when I kissed him for the first time.’’ She shud- 
dered. “I am not a stick, Vick! I—am awoman!... 


{ 
; 


No, don’t say it!’’ She clasped his arm tightly. “Youdon’t — 


likeTom. Youcan’t understand. He may not be what I feel 
he is — he may be less of a man for men than John. But 
I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as she 
loves — what the man is to others. To her he is all men!” 

With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke 
calmly. “And you see I can give him something! I can 
give HIM love and joy. And more — I could make it possible 
for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would 
go with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all 
that he has it in him to be, and I could watch and love. 
Oh, we should be enough, he and I!” 


TOGETHER 411 


“Dear, that you can never tell! ... It was not enough 
for us —for her. You can’t tell when you are like this, 
ready to give all, whether it’s what the other most needs or 
really wants.” 

In spite of Isabelle’s doubting smile, Vickers hurried on, 
— willing now to show his scar. 

“T have never told you how it was over there all these 
years. I could not speak of it.... I thought we should 
be enough, as you say. Wehad our love and our music... . 
But we weren’t enough, almost from the start. She was 

“unhappy. She really wanted those things we had given 
up, which she might have had if it had been otherwise — 
I mean if she had been my wife. I was too much of a fool 
to see that at once. I didn’t want divorce and marriage — 
there were difficulties in the way, too. We had thrown 
over the world, defied it. J didn’t care to sneak back into 
the fold. ... Our love turned bad. All the sentiment 
and lofty feeling somehow went out of it. We became 
two animals, tied together first by our passion, and after- 
wards by —the situation. I can’t tell you all. It was 


killing. .. . It did kill the best in me.” 
“Tt was her fault. The woman makes the kind of love 
always.” 


“No, she might have been different, another way! But 
I tell you the facts. She became dissatisfied, restless. She 
was unfaithful to me. I knew it, and I shielded her — be- 
cause in part I had made her what she was. But it was 
awful. And at the end she went away with that other 
man. He will leave her. Then she’ll take another. ... 
Love turns sour, I tell you — love taken that way. Life 
becomes just cruddled milk. And it eats you like poison. 
Look at me, — the marrow of a man is all gone!” 

“Dear Vick, it was all her fault. Any decent woman 
would have made you happy, — you would have worked, 
written great music, — lived a large life.” 

His story did not touch her except with pity for him. 
To her thinking each case was distinct, and her lips curved 


412 TOGETHER 


unconsciously into a smile, as if she were picturing how 
different it would be with them... . 

The fog had broken, and was rising from the meadows 
below, revealing the trees and the sun. The birds had 
begun to sing in the beeches. It was fresh and cool and 
moist before the warmth of the coming day. Isabelle drew 
deep breaths and loosened her scarf. 

Vickers sat silent, miserable. As he had said to Alice, 
the wreck of his life, where he had got knowledge so dearly, 
availed nothing when most he would have it count for 
another. 

“No, Vick! Whatever happens it will be our own fate, 
nobody’s else — and I want it!” 

There was cool deliberation in her tone as if the resolve 
had been made already. 

“Not John’s fate, too?” 

“He’s not the kind to let a thing like this upset him long. 
While the railroad runs and the housekeeper stays — ” 

“And Molly’s fate?” 

“Of course I have thought about Marian. There are 
ways. It is often done. She would be with me until she 
went to school, which won’t be long now.” 

“But just think what it would mean to her if her mother 
left her father.” 

“Oh, not so much, perhaps! I have been a good mother. 

And why should I kill the twenty, thirty, maybe 
forty years left of my life for a child’s sentiment for her 
mother? Very likely by the time she grows up, people 
will think differently about marriage.” 

She talked rapidly, as if eager to round all the corners. 

“She may even decide to do the same thing some day.” 

“And you would want her to?” 

“Yes! Rather than have the kind of marriage I have 
had.” 

“ Isabelle !” | 

“You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don’t 
understand modern life. And you don’t know women — 


& 


TOGETHER 413 


they’re lots more like men, too, than you think. They 
write such fool things about women. There are so many 
silly ideas about them that they don’t dare to be themselves 
half the time, except a few like Margaret. She is honest 
with herself. Of course she loves Rob Falkner. He’s in 
Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt Mar- 
garet will go and live with him. And she’s got three chil- 
dren!” 

“Tsabelle, you aren’t Margaret Pole or Cornelia Wood- 
yard or any other woman but yourself. There are some 
things you can’t do. I know you. There’s the same twist 
in us both. You simply can’t do this! You think youcan, 
and you talk like this to me to make yourself think that 
you can. ... But when it comes to the point, when you 
pack your bag, you know you will just unpack it again — 
and darn the stockings!” : 

“No, no!” Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; “I can’t 
—Iwon’t.... Why do I sniffle so like this? It’s your 
fault, Vick; you always stir the pathetic note in me, you 
old fraud!” 

She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his 
hand. 

“T know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic 
way. There are many women who can play that game, 
who can live one way for ten or a dozen years, and then 
leave all that they have been — without ever looking back. 
But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are 
sentimentalists. It’s a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can’t 
help ourselves. We want the freedom of our feelings, but 
we want to keep a halo about them. You talked of cutting 
down these beeches. But you would never let one be 
touched, not one.” 

“T’ll have ’em all cut down to-morrow,”’ Isabelle mur- 
mured through her tears. 

“Then you’ll cry over them! No, Belle, it’s no use going 
dead against your nature —the way.you were made to 
run. You may like to soar, but you were meant to walk.” 


414 TOGETHER 


“You think there is nothing to me,—that I haven’t a soul!” 

“T know the soul.” , 

Isabelle flung her arms about her brother and clung there, 
breathing hard. The long night had worn her out with its 
incessant alternation of doubt and resolve, endlessly weav- 
ing through her brain. 

“Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make 
others suffer,’ he murmured. 

“Don’t talk! I am so tired —so tired.” ... 

From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the 
bar of a song, like a bird call. Some workman on the place 
going to his work, Vickers thought. It was repeated, and 
suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck, — her eyes 
clear and a look of determination on her lips. 

“No, Vick; you don’t convince me. ... You did the 
other thing when it came to you. Perhaps we are alike. 
Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to live!” ... 

And with that last defiance, — the curt expression of the 
floating beliefs which she had acquired, — she turned towards 
the house. 

“Come, it is breakfast time.” 

She waited for him to rise and join her. For several 
silent moments they lingered to look at Dog Mountain 
across the river, as if they were looking at it for the last 
time, at something they had both so much loved. 

“You are dear, brother,’’ she murmured, taking his hand. 
“But don’t lecture me. You see I am a woman now!” 

And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers 
saw that he had lost. She had made her resolution; she 
would “dare to live,” and that life would be with Cairy! 
His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself of 
his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle’s eyes, 
it was useless. He read Tom Cairy’s excitable, inflammable, 
lightly poised nature, with the artist glamour in him that 
attracted women. He would be all flame — for a time, — 
then dead until his flame was lighted before another shrine. 
And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served, 


TOGETHER 415 


—no, it was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for 
like the expected motions of nature! 

And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of 
human feelings, — personal defeat, personal inadequacy. 
‘If 1 had been another!’ ‘“ Don’t lecture me!’ she had said 
almost coldly. The spiritual power of guidance had gone 
from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt 
that it had gone. That was part of the “marrow of the 
man’’ that had been burned out. The soul of him was 
impotent; he was a shell, something dead, that could not 
kindle another to life. 

‘T could have saved her,’ he thought. ‘Once I could have 
saved her. She has found me lacking now, when she needs 
me most!’ 

The whistle sounded nearer. 

“Will you do one thing for me, Isabelle?” 

“ All — but one thing !”’ 

“ Let me know first.” 

“You will know.” | 

Cairy was coming down the terrace, cigarette in hand. 
His auburn hair shone in the sunlight. After his sleep, his 
bath, his cup of early coffee, he was bright with physical 
content, and he felt the beauty of the misty morning in every 
sense. Seeing the brother and sister coming from the 
beeches together, he scrutinized them quickly; like the 
perfect egotist, he was swiftly measuring what this particular 
conjunction of personalities might mean to him. Then he 
limped towards them, his face in smiles, and bowing in mock 
veneration, he lay at Isabelle’s feet a rose still dewy with 
mist. 

Vickers turned on his heel, his face twitching. But Isa- 
belle with parted lips and gleaming eyes looked at the man, 
her whole soul glad, as a woman looks who is blind to all but 
one thought, — ‘I love him.’ 

“The breath of the morn,’”’ Cairy said, lifting the rose. 
“The morn of morns, — this is to be a great day, my lady! 
I read it in your eyes.” 


CHAPTER LIII 


_ It was still sultry at four o’clock in the afternoon, and the 
two men walked slowly in the direction of the river. Cairy, 
who had been summoned by telegram to the city, would have 
preferred to be driven to the junction by Isabelle, but 
when Vickers had suggested that he knew a short cut by a 
shady path along the river, he had felt obliged to accept the 
implied invitation. He was debating why Price had sud- 
denly evinced this desire to be with him, for he felt sure that 
Vickers disliked him. But Isabelle had shown plainly that 
she would like him to accept her brother’s offer, — she was 
too tired to go out again, she said, and the only horse that 
could be used was a burden to drive. So he set forth on 
the two-mile walk this oppressive afternoon, not in the best 
mood, determined to let Vickers do the talking. 

They plodded across the meadow in silence, Cairy thinking 
of the interview in the city, his spirits rising as they always 
soared at the slightest hint of an “opening.” ‘“T’ll make her 
take the play,” he said to himself; ‘‘she isn’t much good as 
an actress, but I must get the thing on. Ill need the 
money.’ He hoped to finish his business with this minor 
star, who had expressed a desire to see him, and-return to 
Grafton by the morning express. Isabelle would be dis- 
appointed if he should not be back for luncheon. 

Vickers’s head was bent to the path. He had seized this 
chance of being alone with Cairy, and now that they were 
beyond the danger of interruption his blood beat uncom- 
fortably in his head and he could not speak — for fear of 
uttering the wrong word. ... When they reached the 
river, the two men paused involuntarily in the shade and 
looked back up the slope to the Farm, lying in the warm 
haze on the brow of the hill. As they stood there, the 

416 


. TOGETHER | 417 


shutter of an upper chamber was drawn in, and Cairy smiled 
to himself. 

“The house looks well from here,’’ he remarked. “It’s 
a pleasant spot.” 

“Tt is a dear old place!’’ Vickers answered, forgetting for 
the moment the changes that Isabelle had wrought at the 
Farm. “It’s grown into our lives, — Isabelle’s and mine. 
We used to come here as boy and girl in vacations. ... It 
was a day something like this when my sister was married. 
I remember seeing her as she came out of the house and 
crossed the meadow on my father’s arm. We watched her 
from the green in front of the SUB . She was very 
beautiful — and happy! [2? 

“T can well imagine it,’”’ Cairy replied dryly, surprised at 
Vickers’s sudden loquacity on family matters. “But I 
suppose we ought to be moving on, hadn’t we, to get that 
express? You see I am a poor walker at the best.” 

Vickers struck off by the river path, leading the way. 
Suddenly he stopped, and with flushed face said: — 

“Tom, I wish you wouldn’t come back to-morrow !”’ 

“And why the devil —’’ 

“T know it isn’t my house, it isn’t my wife, it isn’t my 
affair. But, Tom, my sister and I have been closer than 
most, — even husband and wife. I love her, — well, that’s 
neither here nor there!”’ 

“What are you driving at, may I ask?” Cairy demanded 
coldly. | 

“ What I am going to say isn’t usual —it isn’t conventional. 
But I don’t know any conventional manner of doing what 
I want to do. I think we have to drop all that sometimes, 
and speak out like plain human beings. That’s the way Iam 
going to speak to you, —as man to man.... I don’t 
want to beat about the bush, Tom. I think it would be 
better if you did not come back to-morrow, — never came 
back to the Farm!” 

He had not said it as he meant to phrase it. He was 
aware that he had lost ground by blurting it out like this. 

2B 


418 TOGETHER 


Cairy waited until he had lighted a cigarette before he 
replied, with a laugh: — 

“Tt is a little — brusque, your idea. May I ask why I am 
not to come back?” 

“You know well enough! ... I had hoped we could 
keep — other names out of this.” 

+ We can’t.” 

“‘My sister is very unhappy —”’ 

“You think I make your sister unhappy?” 

6é Yes.”’ 

“T prefer to let her be the judge of that,” Cairy retorted, 
walking ahead stiffly and exaggerating his limp. 

“You know she cannot be a judge of what is best — just 
now.” 

“T think she can judge of herself better than any — out- 
sider !”’ 

Vickers flushed, controlled himself, and said almost 
humbly: — 

“T know you care for her, Tom. We both do. So I 
thought we might discuss it amicably.” 

“This doesn’t seem to me a discussable matter.” 

‘But anything-that concerns one I love as I do Isabelle 
must be discussable in some way.” 

“Your sister told me about her talk with you this morning. 

You did your best then, it seems. If you couldn’t 
succeed in changing her mind, — what do you expect from 
me?”’ 

“That you will be generous! ... There are some things 
that Isabelle can’t see straight just now. She doesn’t know 
herself, altogether.”’ 

“T should think that her husband —’’ 

“Can’t you feel his position? His lips are closed by his 
pride, by his love!”’ 

“T should say, Vickers,’’ Cairy remarked with a sneer, 
“that you had better follow Lane’s sensible course. This is 
a matter for the two most concerned and for them alone to 
discuss. ... With your experience you must understand 


TOGETHER 419 


that ours is the situation which a mature man and a mature 
woman must settle for themselves. Nothing that an out- 
sider says can count.” 

And turning around to face Vickers, he added slowly, 
“Isabelle and I will do what seems best to us, just as under 
similar circumstances you did what you thought was best 
for you without consulting anybody, as I remember.”’ 

Vickers quivered as his eye met Cairy’s glance, but he 
accepted the sneer quietly. 

“The circumstances were not the same. And I may have 
learned that it is a serious matter to do what you wish to 
do, — to take another man’s wife, no matter what the cir- 
cumstances are.’ 

“Oh, that’s a mere phrase. There’s usually not much 
taking! When a woman is unhappy in her marriage, when 
she can be BBpDY with another man, when no one can be 
really hurt — 

“Somebody always is hurt.” 

“The only thing I am greatly interested in is Isabelle’s 
happiness, her life. She has been stifled all these years of 
marriage, intellectually, emotionally stifled. She has begun 
to live lately — we have both begun to live. Do you think 
we shall give that up? Do you think any of your little 
preachments can alter the life currents of two strong people 
who love and find their fulfilment in each other? You know 
men and women very little if you think so! We are living 
to-day at the threshold of a new social epoch, —an honester 
one than the world has seen yet, thank God! Men and 
women are daring to throw off the bonds of convention, to 
think for themselves, and determine what is best for them, 
for their highest good, undisturbed by the bogies so long 
held up. I will take my life, I will live, I will not be suffo- 
cated by a false respect for my neighbor’s opinion.” 

Cairy paused in the full career of his phrases. He was 
gesticulating with his hands, almost forgetful of Vickers, 
launched as it were on a dramatic monologue. He was 
accustomed thus to dramatize an emotional state, as those 


420 TOGETHER 


of his temperament are wont to do, living in a world of their 
own feelings imaginatively projected. While Vickers listened 
to Cairy’s torrent of words, he had but one thought: ‘It’s 
no use. He can’t be reached that way — any way!’ 

A stone wall stopped their progress. As Cairy slowly 
dragged himself over the wall, Vickers saw the outline of the 
- pistol in the revolver pocket, and remembered the afternoon 
when Cairy had shown them the weapon and displayed his 
excellent marksmanship. And now, as then, the feeling of 
contempt that the peaceable Anglo-Saxon has for the man 
who always goes armed in a peaceable land came over him. 

Cairy resumed his monologue on the other side of the wall. 

“Tt is the silliest piece of barbaric tradition for a civilized 
man to think that because a woman has once seen fit to give 
herself to him, she is his possession for all time. Because 
she has gone through some form, some ceremony, repeated a 
horrible oath that she doesn’t understand, to say that she 
belongs to that man, is his, like his horse or his house, — phew! 
That’s mere animalism. Human souls belong to them- 
selves! Most of all the soul of a delicately sensitive woman 
like Isabelle! She gives, and she can take away. It’s her 
duty to take herself back when she realizes that it no longer 
means anything to her, that her life is degraded by —” 

“Rot!” Vickers exclaimed impatiently. He had scarcely 
heard what Cairy had been saying. His sickening sense of 
failure, of impotency, when he wished most for strength, had 
been succeeded by rage against the man, not because of his 
fluent argument, but because of himself; not against his 
theory of license, but against him. He saw Isabelle’s life 
broken on the point of this glib egotism. ‘‘ We needn’t dis- 
cuss your theories. The one fact is that my sister’s life shall 
not be ruined by you!”’ 

Cairy, dropping back at once to his tone of worldly con- 
vention, replied calmly: — 

“That I think we shall have to let the lady decide for her- 
self, — whether I shall ruin her life or not. And I beg to point 
out that this topic is of your own choosing. I regard it as an 


TOGETHER 421 


impertinence. Letusdropit. And if you will point out the 
direction, I think I will hurry on by myself and get my train.”’ 

“My God, no! We won’t drop it — not yet. Not until 
you have heard a little more what I have in mind.... I 
think I know you, Cairy, better than my sister knows you. 
Would you make love to a poor woman, who had a lot of 
children, and take her? Would you take her and her 
children, like a man, and work forthem? ... In this case 
you will be given what you want —”’ 

“T did not look for vulgarity from you! But with the 
bourgeoisie, | suppose, it all comes down to dollars and cents. 
I have not considered Mrs. Lane’s circumstances. ”’ 

“Tt’s not mere dollars and cents! Though that is a test, 
— what a man will do for a woman, not what a woman will 
do for a man she loves and — pities.”’ 

As Cairy shot an ugly glance at him, Vickers saw that he 
was fast angering the man past all hope of influence. 
But he was careless now, having utterly failed to avert evil 
from the one he loved most in the world, and he poured out 
recklessly his bitter feeling : — 

“The only success you have to offer a woman is success 
with other women! That little nurse in the hospital, you 
remember? The one who took care of you —’’ 

“Tf you merely wish to insult me—” the Southerner 
stammered. 

They were in the midst of a thicket of alders near the 
river, and the sinking sun, falling through the young green 
leaves, mottled the path with light and shade. The river, 
flushed with spring water, gurgled pleasantly over pebbly 
shallows. It was very still and drowsy; the birds had not 
begun their evening song. 

The two men faced each other, their hands clenched in 
their coat pockets, and each read the hate in the other’s face. 

“Insult you!” Vickers muttered. ‘‘Cairy, you are scum 
to me — scum!” 

Through the darkness of his rage a purpose was struggling 
—a blind purpose — that urged him on. 


422 TOGETHER 


. . “IT don’t know how many other women after the 
nurse have served to fatten your ego. But you will never 
feed on my sister’s blood while I live!” 

He stepped closer unconsciously, and as he advanced 
Cairy retreated, taking his clenched hand from his pocket. 

‘Why don’t you strike? ”’ Vickers cried. 

_ Suddenly he knew that purpose; it had emerged with 
still clearness in his hot brain. His heart whispered, ‘She 
will never do it over my body!’ And the thought calmed 
him at once. He saw Cairy’s trembling arm and angry 
face. ‘He'll shoot,’ he said to himself coldly. ‘It’s in his 
blood, and he’s a coward. He’ll shoot!’ Standing very 
still, his hands in his pockets, he looked quietly at the 
enraged man. He was master now! 

“Why don’t you strike?”’ he repeated. 

And as the Southerner still hesitated, he added slowly : — 

“Do you want to hear more?” 

The memory of old gossip came back to him. ‘He is not 
the real Virginia Cairy,’ some one had said once; ‘he has the 
taint, —that mountain branch of the family, — the mother, 
you know, they say!’ Very slowly Vickers spoke: — 

‘““ No decent man would want his sister living with a fellow 
whose mother —”’ 

As the words fell he could see it coming, — the sudden 
snatch backwards of the arm, the little pistol not even 
raised elbow high. Andin the drowsy June day, with the 
flash of the shot, the thought leapt upwards in his clear mind, 
‘At last Iam not impotent — I have saved her!’ ... 

And when he sank back into the meadow grass without a 
groan, seeing Cairy’s face mistily through the smoke, and 
behind him the blur of the sky, he thought happily, 
‘She will never go to him, now—never!’—and then his 
eyes closed. 


It was after sunset when some men fishing along the river 
heard a groan and hunting through the alders and swamp 
grass found Vickers, lying face down in the thicket. One of 


TOGETHER 423 


the men knew who he was, and as they lifted him from the 
pool of blood where he lay and felt the stiff fold of his coat, 
one said : — 

‘He must have been here some time. He’s lost an awful 
lot of blood! The wound is low down.” 

They looked about for the weapon in the dusk, and not 
finding it, took the unconscious man into their boat and 
started up stream. 

“Suicide?”’ one queried. 
“ Looks that way,— I’ll go back after the pistol, later.”’ 


Isabelle had had tea with Marian and the governess out 
in the garden, and afterwards strolled about through the 
beds, plucking a flower here and there. To the agitation of 
the morning the calm of settled resolve had succeeded. 
She looked at the house and the gardens thoughtfully, as 
one looks who is about to depart on a long journey. In her 
heart was the stillness after the storm, not joy, — that would 
come later when the step was taken; when all was irrevo- 
cably settled. She thought quite methodically of how it 
would all be, — what must be done to cut the cords of the 
old life, to establish the new. John would see the neces- 
sity, — he would not make difficulties. He might even be 
glad to have it all over! Of course her mother would 
wail, but she would learn to accept. She would leave 
Molly at first, and John naturally must have his share 
in her always. That could be worked out later. As for 
the Farm, they might come back to it afterwards. John 
had better stay on here for the present, —it was good for 
Molly. They would probably live in the South, if they 
decided to live in America. She would prefer London, 
however. ... She was surprised at the sure way in which 
she could think it all out. That must be because it was 
right and there was no wavering in her purpose... . 
Poor Vick! he would care most. But he would come to 
realize how much better it was thus, how much more right 
really than to go dragging through a loveless, empty life, 


424 TOGETHER 


And when he saw her happy with Tom — but she wished 
he liked Tom better. | 

The failure of Vickers to return in time for tea had not 
troubled her. He had a desultory, irregular habit of life. 
He might have stopped at Alice’s or even decided to go on 
to the city with Tom, or merely wandered off across the 
country by himself... . 

In the last twilight three men came up the meadow path, 
carrying something among them, walking slowly. Isabelle 
caught sight of them as they reached the lower terrace and 
with her eyes fastened on them, trying to make out the bur- 
den they were carrying so carefully, stood waiting before 
the house. | 

“What is it?’’ she asked at last as the men drew nearer, 
seeing in the gloom only the figures staggering slightly as 
they mounted the steps. 

“Your brother’s been hurt, Mrs. Lane,’’ a voice said. 

“Hurt!” That nameless fear of supernatural interference, 
the quiver of the human nerve at the possible message from 
the infinite, stopped the beating of her heart. 

““Yes’m — shot!” the voice said. ‘‘ Where shall we take 
hn 27 : 

They carried Vickers upstairs and placed him in Isabelle’s 
bed, as she directed. Bending over him, she tried to unbutton 
the stiff coat with her trembling fingers, and suddenly she 
felt something warm — his blood. It was red on her hand. 
She shuddered before an unknown horror, and with mys- 
terious speed the knowledge came to her heart that Fate 
had overtaken her — here! 


CHAPTER LIV 


THE doctors had come, probed for the bullet, and gone. 
‘They had not found the bullet. The wound was crooked, 
they said, entering the fleshy part of the abdomen, ranging 
upwards in the direction of the heart, then to the back. The 
wounded man was still unconscious. There was a chance, 
So the New York surgeon told Isabelle, — only they had not 
been able to locate the bullet, and the heart was beating 
feebly. There had been a great loss of blood. If he had 
been found earlier, perhaps — they did not know. . 

Outside on the drive the doctors exchanged glances, low 
words, and signs. Accident? But how, the ball ranging 
upwards like that? He would have to be on his knees. 
‘Well, then, suicide! Had the pistol been found?... 
There need be no scandal — the family was much loved in 
the village. Accident, of course. The fellow was always 
odd, the local practitioner explained to the city doctor, as 
he carried his distinguished colleague home in his car for 
breakfast. There was that scandal with a woman in Venice. 
They said it was all over, but you could never tell about 
those things. ... , 

Upstairs the nurse made ready the room for illness, while 
Isabelle sat by the bed, watching her brother. Vickers 
was st.ll unconscious, scarcely breathing. The nurse, having 
tried a number of ways to get her out of the room, now ig- 
nored her, and Isabelle sat in a kind of stupor, waiting for 
that Fate which had overtaken her to be worked out. When 
the gray dawn of the morning stole into the dark room, the 
nurse unbolted the shutters and threw open the window. In 
the uncertain light Dog Mountain loomed large and distant. 
Isabelle turned her head from Vickers’s face and watched 
the wooded peak as it came nearer and nearer in the deep- 

425 


426 TOGETHER 


ening light. ... It was this hill that she and Vickers had 
climbed in the winter morning so long ago! How wonderful 
it had been then, life, for them both, with glorious possibili- 
ties of living! She had put forth her hands to grasp them, 
these possibilities, one after another, to grasp them for 
herself. Now they had come to an end —for both. There 
_ Was no more to grasp. 

When she turned back ue the silent form by her side, she 
saw that Vickers had opened his eyes. His face was very 
white and the eyes were buried deep beneath the eyebrows 
as of a man long sick, and he lay motionless. But the eyes 
had meaning in them; they were the eyes of the living. 
So brother and sister looked into each other, thus, and with- 
out words, without a murmur, it was all known between 
them. She understood! He had thrown his life into the 
abyss before her that she might be kept to that vision they 
had. had as boy and girl. It was not to be for him. But 
for her! 

“Vick!’’ she whispered, falling on her knees by his side. 
For reply there was that steady searching look, which 
spoke to unknown depths within her. “ Vick!’ she moaned. 
The white lips of the dying man trembled, and a faint flutter 
of breath crossed them — but no words. His fingers touched 
her hair. When she looked at him again through her tears, 
the eyes were closed, and the face bore an austere look of 
preoccupation, as of one withdrawn from the business of 
life. ... Afterwards the nurse touched the kneeling 
woman, the doctor came, she was led away. She knew that 
Vickers was dead. 


Late that afternoon there came a knock at the door of 
the room where Isabelle was, and her husband, hearing no 
sound, entered. She looked up wonderingly from the lounge 
where she lay. She did not know that John was in the 
house, that he had been sent for. She was unaware what 
time had elapsed since the evening before. 

“Tsabelle,”’ he said and stopped. She looked at him 


TOGETHER 427 


questioningly. The irritation that of late his very presence had 
caused her she was not conscious of now. All the irritations 
of life had been suddenly wiped out in the great fact. As 
she looked at her husband’s grave face, she saw it with a 
new sense, —she saw what was behind it, as if she had had the 
power given her to read beneath matter. She saw his con- 
cern, his real sorrow, his consideration, the distress for her 
in the heart of this man, whom she had thrust out of her 
Bie. 1 4 

“Isabelle,” he said very gently, hesitantly. “Tom has 
come —is downstairs — wants to see you. He asked me 
if you would see him for a moment.” 

This also did not surprise her. She was silent for a mo- 
ment, and her husband said: — 

“Do you want to see him?” 

“Yes,”’ she replied finally. “I will see him.... I will 
go down at once.” 

She rose and stepped towards the door. 

“Tsabelle!’’ Her husband’s voice broke. Still standing 
with one hand on the knob of the door, he took from his 
pocket with the other a small pistol, and held it towards her 
on the palm of his hand. “Isabelle,’”’ he said, “this was in 
the river — near where they found him!” 

She looked at it calmly. It was that little gold and ivory 
chased toy which she remembered Tom had used one after- 
noon to shoot the magnolia blossoms with. She remembered 
it well. It was broken open, and a cartridge half protruded 
from the breach. - 

“T thought you should know,” Lane added. 

“Yes,” Isabelle whispered. “I know. I knew!... 
But I will go down and see him.” 

Her husband replaced the pistol in his pocket and opened 
the door for her. 


Cairy was waiting before the fireplace in the library, ner- 
vously pacing to and fro across the rug. Would she see him? 
How much did she know? How much did they all know? 


428 TOGETHER 


How much would she forgive? ... These questions had 
racked him every hour since in a spasm of nervous terror 
he had flung the pistol over the bushes and heard it splash 
in the river, and with one terrified look at the wounded 
man, whom he had dragged into the thicket, had got him- 
self in some unremembered fashion to the junction in time 
for the express. These and other considerations — what 
story should he tell? —had racked him all through the 
evening, which he had been obliged to spend with the 
actress, answering her silly objections to this ‘and that 
in his play. Then during the night it became clear to him 
that he must return to the Farm in the morning as he had 
planned, as if nothing had happened. His story would 
be that Vickers had turned back before they reached the 
junction, and had borrowed his pistol to shoot at wood- 
chucks. . . . Would Isabelle believe this? She must believe 
it! ... It took courage to walk up to the familiar 
house, but he must see her. It was the only way. And 
he had been steadying himself for his part ever since he had 
left the city. 

When Isabelle entered the room, she closed the door behind 
her and stood with her back against it for support. She 
wore the same white dress that she had had on when Cairy 
and Vickers had left her, not having changed it for tea. 
It had across the breast a small red stain, — the stain of her . 
brother’s blood. Cairy reached out his hands and started 
towards her, crying : — | 

“Tsabelle! Isabelle! how awful! Isabelle, — I —”’ 

She raised her arm as if to forbid him to advance, and he 
stood still, his words dying on his lips. Logking at him out 
of her weary eyes, Isabelle seemed to see through the man, 
with that same curious insight that had come when she had 
read the truth in her brother’s eyes; the same insight that 
had enabled her to see the kindness and the pity beneath her 
husband’s impassive gravity. So now she knew what he 
was going to say, the lie he would try to tell her. It was 
as if she knew every secret corner of the man’s soul, had 


TOGETHER 429 


known it always really, and had merely veiled her eyes to 
him wilfully. Now the veil had been torn aside. Had 
Vickers given her this power to see into the heart of things, 
for always, so that the truths behind the veil she made 
should.never be hid? 

‘Why does he try to lie to me?’ she seemed to ask herself. 
‘Tt.is.so weak to lie in this world where all becomes known.’ 
She merely gazed at him in wonder, seeing the deformed soul 
of the deformed body, eaten by egotism and passions. And 
this last — cowardice! And he was the man she had loved! 
That she had been ready to die for, to throw away all for, 
even the happiness of others! ... It was all strangely 
dead. A body stood there before her in its nakedness. 

“What do you want ?”’ she demanded almost indifferently. 

“T had to see you!”’ He had forgotten his story, his 
emotion, — everything beneath that piercing stare, which 
stripped him to the bone. 

“Haven’t you — a word —” he muttered. 

Her eyes cried: ‘I know. I know! I know atu —even 
as those who are dead know.’ 

“Nothing!” she said. 

“Tsabelle!”’ he cried, and moved nearer. But the warning 
hand stopped him again, and the empty voice said, ‘“ Noth- 
ing!” 

Then he saw that it was all ended between them, that this 
brother’s blood, which stained her breast, lay forever between 
them, could not be crossed by any human will. And more, 
that the verity of life itself lay like a blinding light between 
them, revealing him and her and their love. It was dead, 
that love which they had thought was sacred and eternal, in 
the clear light of truth. 

Without a word he walked to the open window and stepped 
into the garden, and his footstep on the gravel died away. 
Then Isabelle went back to the dead body in her room above. 

On the terrace Lane was sitting beside his little girl, the 
father talking in low tones to the child, explaining what 
is death. 


° 








Bee BART SIR. gn ae 








CHAPTER LV 


Ir was a long, cold drive from the station at White River 
up into the hills. In the gloom of the December afternoon 
the aspect of the austere, pitiless northern winter was in- 
tensified. A thin crust of snow through which the young 
pines and firs forced their green tips covered the dead black- 
berry vines along the roadside. The ice of the brooks was 
broken in the centre like cracked sheets of glass, revealing 
the black water gurgling between the frozen banks. The road 
lay steadily uphill, and the two rough-coated farm horses 
pulled heavily at the stiff harness, slipping constantly in the 
track that was worn smooth and polished by the shoes of the 
wood-sleds. As the valley fell behind, the country opened 
out in broad sheets of snow-covered fields where frozen 
wisps of dead weeds fluttered above the crust. Then came 
the woods, dark with “black growth,” and more distant 
hillsides, gray and black, where the leafless deciduous growth 
mingled with the evergreens. At infrequent intervals along 
the road appeared little farm-houses, — two rooms and an 
attic, with rickety outhouses and barns, all banked with earth 
to protect them from the winter. These were forlorn enough 
when they showed marks of life; but again and again they 
were deserted, with their special air of decay, the wind 
sucking through the paneless windows, the snow lying in 
unbroken drifts up to the rotting sills. Sometimes a lane 
led from the highroad to. where one or perhaps two houses 
were hidden under the shelter of a hill, removed still farther 
from the artery of life. Already the lamps had begun to 
glimmer from these remote habitations, dotting the hillsides 
like widely scattered candles. 

2¥ 433 


434 TOGETHER 


Lonely and desolate! These human beings lived in an 
isolation of snow and frozen earth. So thought Isabelle 
Lane, chilled beneath the old fur robe, cold to the heart. . . . 
Ahead the hills lifted with broader lines, higher, more lonely, 
and the gray clouds almost touched their tops. In a cleft of 
the range towards which the road was winding, there shone 
a saffron light, the last effort of the December sun to break 
through the heavy sky. And for a few moments there 
gleamed far away to the left a spot of bright light, mar- 
-vellously clear and illuming, where the white breast of a 
clearing on the mountain had received these last few rays 
of sun. A warm golden pathway led through the forest to it 
from the sun. That distant spot of sunny snow was radiant, 
still, uplifting. Suddenly gloom again! The saffron glow 
faded from the Pass between the hills, and the north wind 
drew down into the valley, drifting the manes and the tails 
of the plodding horses. Soft wisps of snow circled and fell, 
— the heralding flakes of winter storm. .. . 

It seemed to Isabelle that she had been journeying on like 
this for uncounted time, and would plod on like this always, 
— chilled, numbed to the heart, moving through a frozen, 
lonely world far from the voices of men, remote from the 
multitudinous feet bent on the joyous errands of life... . 
She had sunk into a lethargy of body and mind, in which the 
cheerless physical atmosphere reflected the condition of 
being within, — something empty or dead, with a dull ache 
instead of consciousness. .. . 

The sleigh surmounted the long hill, swept at a trot around 
the edge of the mountain through dark woods, then out 
into an unexpected plateau of open fields. There was a 
cluster of lights in a small village, and they came to a sudden 
stop before a little brick house that was swathed in spruce 
boughs, like a blanket drawn close about the feet, to keep out 
the storm. The door opened and against the lighted room 
a small black figure stood out. Isabelle, stumbling numbly 
up the steps, fell into the arms of Margaret Pole. 

“You must be nearly dead, poor dear! I have lighted a 


TOGETHER 435 


fire in your room upstairs. ... I am so glad you have 
come. I have hoped for it so long!”’ 

When they were before the blazing wood fire, Margaret 
unfastened Isabelle’s long cloak and they stood, both in 
black, pale in the firelight, and looked at each other, then 
embraced without a word. 

“J wanted to come,” Isabelle said at last when she was 
settled into the old arm-chair beside the fire, “ when you first 
wrote. But I was too ill. I seemed to have lost not only 
strength but will to move. ... It’s good to be here.’ 

“They are the nicest people, these Shorts! He’s a wheel- 
wright and blacksmith, and she used to teach school. It’s all 
very plain, like one of our mountain places in Virginia; but 
it’s heavenly peaceful — removed. You’ll feel in a day or 
two that you have left everything behind you, down there 
below !”’ 

“ And the children ?”’ 

“They are splendidly. And Ned is really getting better — 
the doctor has worked a miracle for the poor little man. We 
think it won’t be long now before he can walk and do what 
the others do. And he is happy. He used to have sullen 
fits, —resented his misfortune just like a grown person. 
He’s different now !”’ 

There was a buoyant note in Margaret’s deep tones. Pale 
as she was in her black dress and slight, — “the mere spirit 
of a woman,” as Falkner had called her, — there was a 
gentler curve to the lips, less chafing in the sunken eyes. 

‘I suppose it is a great relief,’ thought Isabelle, — ‘ Larry’s 
death, even with all its horror, — she can breathe once more, 
poor Margaret!’ | 

“Tell me!” she said idly, as Margaret wheeled the lounge 
to the fire for Isabelle to rest on; ‘‘ however did you happen 
to come up here to the land’s end in Vermont — or is it 
Canada?” 

“Grosvenor is just inside the line. ... Why, it was 
the doctor — Dr. Renault, you know, the one who operated 
on Ned. I wanted to be near him. It was in July after 


436 TOGETHER 


Larry’s death that we came, and I haven’t been away since. 

And I shall stay, always perhaps, at least as long as the 
doctor can do anything for the little man. Andforme... . 
I like it. At first it seemed a bit lonesome and far away, 
this tiny village shut in among the hills, with nobody to 
talk to. But after a time you come to see a lot just here 
in this mite of a village. One’s glasses become adjusted, as 
the doctor says, and you can see what you have never taken © 
the time to see before. There’s a stirring world up here 
on Grosvenor Flat! And the country is so lovely, — bigger 
and sterner than my old Virginia hills, but not unlike them.” 

“And why does your wonderful doctor live out of the 
world like this?” 

“Dr. Renault used to be in New York, you know, — had 
his own private hospital there for his operations. He had 
to leave the city and his work because he was threatened 
with consumption. for a year he went the usual round of 
cures, — to the Adirondacks, out West; and he told me that 
one night while he was camping on the plains in Arizona, 
lying awake watching the stars, it came to him suddenly 
that the one thing for him to do was to stop this health- 
hunt, go back where he came from, and go to work — and 
forget he was ill until he died. The next morning he broke 
camp, rode out to the railroad, came straight here from 
Arizona, and has been here ever since.” 

“But why here?” 

“Because he came from Grosvenor as a boy. It must 
be a French family — Renault — and it is only a few miles 
north to the line. ... So he came here, and the climate 
or the life or something suits him wonderfully. He works 
like a horse!”’ 

“Ts he interesting, your doctor?”’ Isabelle asked idly. 

“That’s as you take him,’”’ Margaret replied with a little 
smile. ‘‘Not from Conny Woodyard’s point of view, I 
should say. He has too many blind sides. But I have 
come to think him a really great man! And that, my dear, 
is more than what we used to call ‘interesting.’ ”’ 


TOGETHER 437 


“But how can he do his work up here?”’ 

“That’s the wonderful part of it all! He’s made the 
world come to him, — what he needs of it. He says there is 
nothing marvellous in it; that all through the middle ages 
the sick and the needy flocked to remote spots, to deserts 
and mountain villages, wherever they thought help was to 
be found. Most great cures are not made even now in the 
cities.’”’ 

“But hospitals ?”’ 

“He has his own, right here in Grosvenor Flat, and a 
perfect one. The great surgeons and doctors come up here 
and send patients here. He has all he can do, with two 
assistants.” : 

“He must be a strong man.” 

“You will see! The place is Renault. It all bears the 
print of his hand. He says himself that given a man with 
a real idea, a persistent idea, and he will make the desert 
blossom like a garden or move mountains, — in some way 
he will make that idea part of the organism of life! ... 
There! I am quoting the doctor again, the third time. It’s 
a habit one gets into up here!” 

At the tinkle of a bell below, Margaret exclaimed : — 

“Tt’s six and supper, and you have had no real rest. You 
see the hours are primitive here, — breakfast at seven, 
dinner noon, and supper six. You will get used to it ina 
few days.” 

The dining room was a corner of the old kitchen that had 
been partitioned off. It was warm and bright, with an 
open fire, and the supper that Mrs. Short put on the table 
excellent. Mr. Short came in presently and took his seat 
at the head of the table. He was a large man, with a bony 
face softened by a thick grizzled beard. He said grace in 
a low voice, and then served the food. Isabelle noticed 
that his large hands were finely formed. His manner 
was kindly, in a subtle way that of the host at his 
own table; but he said little or nothing at first. The chil- 
dren made the conversation, piping up like little birds about 


438 TOGETHER ‘ 

the table and keeping the older people laughing. Isabelle 
had always felt that children at the table were a bore, either 
forward and a nuisance, or like little lynxes uncomfortably 
absorbing conversation that was not suited to them. Per- 
haps that was because she knew few families where children 
were socially educated to take their place at the table, 
being relegated for the most part to the nurse or the 
governess. 

Isabelle was much interested in Mr. Short. His wife, a 
thin, gray-haired woman, who wore spectacles and had a 
timid manner of speaking, was less of a person than the 
blacksmith. Sol Short, she found out later, had never 
been fifty miles from Grosvenor Flat in his life, but he had 
the poise, the self-contained air of a man who had acquired 
all needed worldly experience. 

“Was it chilly coming up the Pass?’’ he asked Isabelle. 
“T thought ’twould be when it came on to blow some from 
the mountains. And Pete Jackson’s horses are slow.” 

“They seemed frozen!’ 

The large man laughed. 

“Well, you would take your time if you made that journey 
twice a day most.everysday in the year. You can’t expect 
them to get exactly excited over it, can you?” 

“Mr. Short,” Margaret remarked, “I saw a light this 
evening in the house on Wing Hill. What can it be?” 

“Some folks from down state have moved in, — renters, 
I take it.” 

“How do you know that?” 

“From the look of the stuff Bailey’s boy was hauling up 
there this morning. It’s travelled often.” 

“Mr. Short,’”’ Margaret explained merrily, “is the Grosve- 
nor Times. His shop is the centre of our universe. From 
it he sees all that happens in our world — orhis cronies 
tell him what he can’t see. He knows what is going on in © 
the remotest corner of the township, — what Hiram Bailey 
got for his potatoes, where Bill King sold his apples, whether 
Mrs. Beans’s second son has gone to the Academy at White 


TOGETHER 439 


River. He knows the color and the power of every horse, 
the number of cows on every farm, the make of every wagon, 
— everything !”’ 

“Not so bad as all that!” the blacksmith protested. It 
was evidently a family joke. “We don’t gossip, do we, 
Jenny?” 

“We don’t gossip! But we keep our eyes open and tell 
what we see.” 

It was a pleasant, human sort of atmosphere. After the 
meal the two friends went back to Isabelle’s couch and fire, 
Mrs. Short offering to put the youngest child to bed for 


Margaret. | 
“She likes to,” Margaret explained. ‘‘Her daughter 
has gone away to college. ... It is marvellous what 


that frail-looking woman can do; she does most of the 
cooking and housework, and never seems really busy. She 
prepared this daughter for college! She makes me ashamed 
of the little I accomplish, — and she reads, too, half a dozen 
magazines and all the stray books that come her way.’ 

“But how can you stand it?’’ Isabelle asked bluntly; 
“T mean for months.” 

“Stand it? You mean the hours, the Strongs, Grosvenor? 
; Why, I feel positively afraid when I think that some 
day I may be shaken out of this nest! You will see. It 
is all so simple and easy, so human and natural, just like 
Mr. Short’s day’s work, — the same thing for thirty years, 
ever since he married the school teacher and took this house. 
You'll hear him building the fires to-morrow before daylight. 
He is at his shop at six-thirty, home at twelve, back again at 
one, milks the cow at five, and supper at six, bed at nine. 
Why, it’s an Odyssey, that day, — as Mr. Short lives it!”’ 

Margaret opened the window and drew in the shutters. 
Outside it was very still, and the snow was falling in fine 
flakes. 

“The children will be so glad to-morrow,” she remarked, 
“with all this snow. They are building a large bob-sled 
under Mr. Short’s direction. ... No!” she resumed her 


440 TOGETHER 


former thread of thought. ‘It doesn’t count so much as 
we used to think — the variety of the thing you do, the 
change, — the novelty. It’s the mind you do it with that 
makes it worth while.” 

Isabelle stared at the ceiling which was revealed fitfully 
by the dying fire. She still felt dead, numb, but this was 
a peaceful sort of grave, so remote, so silent. That endless 
torturing thought — the chain of weary reproach and use- 
less speculation, which’ beset every waking moment — 
had ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a per- 
petual whirring sound. 

She liked to look at Margaret, to feel her near, but she 
mused over her. She was changed. Margaret had had 
this disease, too, this weariness of living, the torturing 
doubt, —if this or that, the one thing or the other, had hap- 
pened, it might have been different, — the haggling of de- 
feated will! No wonder she was glad to be out of the 
city up here at peace. .. . 

“But one can’t stay out of life for always,’’ she remon- 
strated. 

‘Why not? What you call the world seems to get along 
very well without us, without any one in particular. And 
I don’t feel the siren call, not yet!” 

“But life can’t be over at thirty-three, — one can’t be 
really dead, I suppose.” 

“No, — just beginning!’’ Margaret reapantied with an 
elasticity that amazed Isabelle, who remembered the lan- 
guid woman she had known so many years. ‘Just begin- 
ning,” she murmured, “after the journey in the dark.” 

‘Of course,’ mused Isabelle, ‘she means the relief from 
Larry, the anxiety over the boy, — all that she has had to 
bear. Yes, for her there is some beginning anew. She 
might possibly marry Rob Falkner now, if his wife got 
somebody else to look after her silly existence. Why 
shouldn’t she? Margaret is still young, — she might even 
be pretty again.’ And Isabelle wished to know what the 
situation was between Margaret and Falkner. 


TOGETHER 441 


Nothing, it seemed, could make any difference to herself ! 
She ached to tell some one of the despair in her heart, but 
even to Margaret she could not speak. Since that summer 
morning six months before when Vickers had died without 
a spoken word, she had never said his name. Her husband 
had mutely respected her muteness. Then she had been 
ill,—too ill to think or plan, too ill for everything but re- 
membrance. Now it was all shut up, her tragedy, fester- 
ing at the bottom of her heart like an undrained wound, 
poisoning her soul. ... Suddenly in the midst of her 
brooding she woke with a start at something Margaret was 
saying, so unlike her reticent self. 

. “You knew, of course, about Larry’s death?” 

“Yes, John told me.” 

“It was in the papers, too.’ 

“Poor Margaret !—I was so sorry for you — it was ter- 
rible!”’ 

“You mustn’t think of it that way, —I mean for me. 
It was terrible that any human being should be where Larry 
got, — where he was hunted like a dog by his own acts, and 
in sheer despair made an end of himself. I often think of 
that — think what it must be not to have the courage to 
go on, not to feel the strength in yourself to live another 
hour!” 

“Tt’s always insanity. No sane person would do such a 


thing!” 
“We call it insanity. But what difference does the name 
make?” Margaret said. ‘A human being falls into a state 


of mind where he is without one hope, one consideration, — 
all is misery. Then he takes what seems the only relief — 
death — as he would food or drink; that is sad.” 

“Tt was Larry’s own doing, Margaret; he had his 
chance!” 

“Of course, more than his chance — more than many 
chances. He was the kind of protoplasm that could not 
endure life, that carried in itself the seed of decay, — yet — 
yet —”’ She raised her pale face with the luminous eyes 


442 TOGETHER 


and said softly: ‘‘Sometimes I wonder if it had to be. 
When I look at little Ned and see how health is coming to 
that crippled body — the processes are righting themselves 
— sound and healthy, ready to be helped back to life — I . 
wonder if it may not be so with other processes not wholly 
physical. I wonder! ... Did you ever think, Isabelle, 
that we are waiting close to other worlds, — we can almost 
hear from them with our ears, — but we only hear confusedly 
so far. Some day we may hear more clearly!” 

Margaret had reverted, Isabelle concluded, to the religion 
of her father, the Bishop! What she was vaguely talking 
about was the Bishop’s heaven, in which the widow and 
orphan were counselled to take comfort. 

“‘T wish I could feel it, — what the church teaches,” Isabelle 
replied. ‘But I can’t, — it isn’t real. I go to church and 
say over the creed and ask myself what it means, and feel 
the same way when I come out — or worse!”’ 

“T don’t mean religion — the church,’ Margaret smiled 
back. ‘‘That has been dead for me a long time. It’s 
something you come to feel within you about life. I can’t 
explain — only there might have been a light even for poor 
Larry in that last dreadful darkness! ... Some day I 
want to tell you all about myself, something I have 
never told any one, — but it will help to explain, perhaps. 

Now you must go to bed, — I von send my black 
Sue up with your coffee in the morning.” 

Isabelle, as she lay awake in the stillness, the absolute 
hush of the snowy night, thought of what Margaret had 
said about her husband. John had told her how Larry had 
_ gradually gone to the bad in a desultory, weak-kneed fashion, 
— had lost his clerkship in the A. and P. that Lane had got 
for him; then had taken to hanging about the down- — 
town hotels, betting a little, drinking a little, and finally 
one morning the curt paragraph in the paper: ‘‘ Found, in 
the North River, body of a respectably dressed man about 
forty years. Papers on him show that he was Lawrence 
Pole of Westchester,” etc., ete. 


TOGETHER 44? 


And John’s brief comment, — ‘ Pity that he hadn’t done 
it ten years ago.”’ Yes, thought Isabelle, pity that he was 
ever born, the derelict, ever came into this difficult world 
to complicate further its issues. Margaret apparently had 
towards this worthless being who had marred her life a 
softened feeling. But it was absurd of her now to think 
that she might have loved him! 


CHAPTER LVI 


. Lona before it was light the next morning Isabelle heard 
the heavy tread of the blacksmith as he was going his rounds 
to light the fires; then she snuggled deeper into bed. When 
Margaret’s maid finally came with the coffee and pushed 
back the heavy shutters, Isabelle looked out into another 
world from the one she had come to half frozen the after- 
noon before. She had entered the village from the rear, 
and now she looked off south and west from the level shelf 
on which the houses sat, across a broad valley, to black 
woods and a sloping breast of hills, freshly powdered with 
snow, to the blue sky-line, all as clear in the snow-washed 
mountain air as in a desert. The sun striking down into 
the valley brought out the faint azure of the inner folds 
of the hills. 

There was scarcely a footprint in the road to break the 
soft mass of new-fallen snow. Isabelle could see a black 
cat deliberately stealing its way from the barn across the 
road to the house. It lifted each paw with delicate pre- 
cision and pushed it firmly into the snow, casting a deep 
shadow on the gleaming surface of white. The black cat, 
lean and muscular, stretching itself across the snow, was 
the touch of art needed to complete the silent scene. . . 

A wood-sled drawn by two heavy horses came around the 
corner of the house, softly churning the new snow before 
its runners. A man clad in a burly sheepskin coat and 
fur cap, his feet in enormous rubber shoes, stood on the 
sled, slowly thrashing his arms and breathing frostily. 

A Hello, Sol!’ the man cried to the blacksmith, who was 
shovelling a path from the barn to the house. 

“Morning, Ed. Going up to Cross’s lot?” 

(as VYa-—as CA we DY 

444 


TOGETHER | 445 


“Hard sledding ?”’ 

The two men exchanged amicable nothings in the crisp, 
brilliant air through which their voices rang with a pecul- 
iar timbre. To Isabelle, looking and listening from her 
window, it was all so fresh, so simple, like a picture on a Jap- 
anese print! For the first time in months she had a distinct 
desire, — to get outside and look at the hills. 

“You are commanded,” announced Margaret, a little 
later, ‘‘to the doctor’s for supper at six. That wasn’t the 
way it was put exactly, but it amounts to the same thing. 
The doctor’s least word is a command here. ... Now I 
am off to help the housekeeper with the accounts, — it’s 
Pallet am: good for!” .. . 

So Isabelle was left to set forth on her ramble of explora- 
tion by herself. She pushed through the snow to the last 
house on the village street, where the road dipped down a 
long hill, and the wide arc of northern mountains was 
revealed in a glittering rampart. Her eyes filled involun- 
tarily with tears. 

“T must be very weak,” she said to herself, “to cry be- 
cause it’s beautiful!’’ And sitting down on a rock by the 
road, she cried more, with a feeling of self-pity and a little 
self-contempt. An old woman came to the door of the 
house she had just passed with a dish-pan of water and 
looked curiously at the stranger. At first the country- 
woman opened her lips as if she intended to speak, but 
stood with her dish-pan and said nothing. Isabelle could 
see through her tears the bent figure and battered face of 
the old woman, —a being without one line of beauty or 
even animal grace. What a fight life must have been to 
reduce any woman’s body to that! And the purpose, — 
to keep the breath of life in a worn old body, just to live? 

“Pleasant morning!’’ Isabelle said with a smile through 
her tears. 

“Tt ain’t bad,” the old woman admitted, emptying her 
dish-pan. 

As Isabelle retraced her steps into the village the old 


> 


446 TOGETHER 


woman followed her with curious eyes, thinking no doubt 
that a woman like this stranger, well dressed, young, and 
apparently well fed, ought not to be sitting on a rock on. 
a winter’s day crying! 

“And she’s quite right!’’ Isabelle -said to herself. 

The jewelled morning was the same to them both, — the 
outer world was imperturbable in its circular variety. But 
the inner world, the vision, — ah, there was the extraordinary 
variation in human lives! From heaven to hell through all 
gradations, and whether it were heaven or hell did not 
depend on being like this crone at the end of the road or 
like herself in its sheltered nooks, — it was something else. 

“T will have to see Margaret’s wonderful doctor, if this 
keeps on,”’ she said, still dropping tears. 

The blacksmith stood beside the open door of his shop, 
gazing reflectively across the white fields to the upland. 
Beside him was a broken wood-sled that he was mending. 
Seeing Isabelle he waved her a slow salute with the sled- 
runner he had ready in his hand. 

“Morning!” he called out in his deep voice. “Seeing 
the country? The hills are extra fine this morning.” 

He proceeded slowly to brush the snow from the frame 
of the sled, still glancing now and then over the fields. Isa- 
belle felt that she had caught his characteristic moment, 
his inner vision. 

“You have a good view from your shop.” 

“The best in the town! I’ve always been grateful to 
my father for one thing, — well, for many things, — but 
specially because he had the good sense to set the old smithy 
right here where you can see something. When there isn’t 
much going on, I come out of doors here and take a long 
look at the mountains. It rests your back so.” : 

Isabelle sat down in the shop and watched Mr. Short 
repair the sled, interested in the slow, sure movements he 
made, the painstaking way in which he fitted iron and wood 
and riveted the pieces together. It must be a relief, she 
thought, to work with one’s hands like that, — which men 


TOGETHER 447 


could do, forgetting the number of manual movements 
Mrs. Short also made during the same time. The black- 
smith talked as he worked, in a gentle voice without a trace 
of self-consciousness, and Isabelle had again that sense of 
VISION, of something inward and sustaining in this man of 
remote and narrow range, — something that expressed it- 
self in the slow speech, the peaceful, self-contained manner. ~ 
As she went back up the street to the house the thick cloud 
of depression, of intangible misery, in which she had been 
living as it seemed to her for eternity, settled down once 
more, — the habitual gait of her mind, like the dragging 
gait of her feet. She at least was powerless to escape the 
bitter food of idle recollection. | 


The doctor’s house was a plain, square, white building, 
a little way above the main road, from which there was a 
drive winding through the spruces. On the sides and be- 
hind the house stretched one-story wings, also white and 
severely plain. ‘Those are the wards, and the one behind 
is the operating room,’’ Margaret explained. 

The house inside was as plain as on the outside: there 
were no pictures, no rugs, no useless furniture. The large 
hall divided the first floor in two. On the right was the 
office and the dining room, on the left with a southerly 
exposure the large living room. There were great, blazing 
fires in all the rooms and in the hall at either side, — there 
was no other heat, — and the odor of burning fir boughs 
permeated the atmosphere. 

“Tt’s like a hospital almost,’’ Isabelle commented as 
they waited in the living room. “And he has French 
blood! How can he stand it so— bare and cold?” 

“The doctor’s limitations are as interesting as his powers. 
He never has a newspaper in the house, nor a magazine, — 
burns them up if he finds them lying about. Yet he reads 
a great deal. He has a contempt for all the froth of imme- 
diate living, and still the whole place is the most modern, 
up-to-date contemporary machine of its kind!” 


448 TOGETHER 


Outside was the blackness of the cold winter night; in- 
side the grayness of stained walls. lighted by the glow from 
the blazing fires. A few pieces of statuary, copies of the 
work of the idealistic Greek period, stood in the hall and the 
living room. All that meant merely comfort, homelikeness 
—allin a word that was characteristically American — was 
wanting. Nevertheless, as Isabelle waited in the room 
she was aware of a peculiar grave beauty in its very exchu- 
sions. This house had the atmosphere of a mind. 

Some nurse came in and nodded to Margaret, then Mrs. 
Beck the matron appeared, and a couple of young doctors 
followed. They had been across the valley on snow-shoes 
in the afternoon and were talking of their adventures in 
the woods. There was much laughter and gayety — as 
if gathered here in the wilderness these people all knew 
one another very well. After some time Isabelle became 
aware of the entrance of another person, and turning around 
saw a thin, slight man with a thick head of gray hair. His 
smooth-shaven face was modelled with many lines, and 
under the dark eyebrows that had not yet turned gray there 
were piercing black eyes. Although the talk and the laugh- 
ter did not die at once, there was the subtle movement 
among the persons in the rcom which indicated that the 
master of the house had appeared. Dr. Renault walked 
directly to Isabelle. 

“Good evening, Mrs. Lane. Will you come in to 
supper ?”’ 

He offered her his arm, and without further word of cere- 
mony they went into the dining room. At the table the 
doctor said little to her at first. He leaned back in his chair, 
his eyes half closed, listening to the talk of the others, as 
if weary after a long day. Isabelle was puzzled by a sense 
of something familiar in the man at her side; she must 
have met him before, she could not tell where. The dining 
room, like the living room, was square, panelled with white 
wood, and the walls stained. It was bare except for several 
copies of Tanagra figurines in a recess above the chimney 


TOGETHER 449 


and two large photographs of Greek athletes. The long 
table, made of heavy oak planks, had no cloth, and the 
dishes were of the coarsest earthenware, such as French 
peasants use. 

The talk was lively enough, — about two new cases that 
had arrived that afternoon, the deer-hunting season that 
had just closed, bear tracks discovered on Bole Hill near 
the lumber-camp, and a new piano that a friend had sent 
for the convalescent or “dotty’’ ward, as they called it. 
The young doctor who sat at Isabelle’s right asked her if 
she could play or sing, and when she said no, he asked her 
if she could skee. Those were the only personal remarks 
of the meal. Margaret, who was very much at home, 
entered into the talk with unwonted liveliness. It was a 
workshop of busy men and women who had finished the 
day’s labor with enough vitality left to react. The food, 
Isabelle noticed, was plentiful and more than good. At 
the end of the meal the young men lighted cigarettes, and 
one of the nurses also smoked, while a box of cigars was 
placed before Renault. Some one began to sing, and the 
table joined the chorus, gathering about the chimney, where 
there were a couple of settles. 

It was a life, so Isabelle saw, with an order of its own, a 
direction of its own, a strong undercurrent. Its oddity 
and nonchalance were refreshing. Like one of the mountain 
brooks it ran its own course, strong and liquid beneath the 
snow, to its own end. 

“You seem to have a very good time up here among your- 
selves!’ Isabelle said to the doctor, expressing her wonder 
frankly. 

“And why not?” he asked, a smile on his thin lips. He 
helped himself to a cigar, still looking at her whimsically, 
and biting off its end held a match ready to strike, as if 
awaiting her next remark. 

“But don’t you ever want to get away, to go back to the 
city? Don’t you feel — isolated?” 

“Why should we? Because there’s no opera or dinner 

2G 


450 TOGETHER 


parties? We have a dinner party every night.” He 
lighted his cigar and grinned at Isabelle. “The city delu- 
sion is one of the chief idiocies of our day. City people 
encourage the idea that you can’t get on without their so- 
ciety. Man was not meant to live herded along sidewalks. 
The cities breed the diseases for us doctors, — that is their 
one great occupation.”’ 

He threw the match into the fire, leaned back in his chair 
with his hands knit behind his head, and fastening his 
black eyes on Isabelle began to talk. 

‘“T lived upwards of twenty years in cities with that same 
delusion, — not daring to get more than a trolley-car fare 
away from the muck and noise. Then I was kicked out, — 
had to go, thank God! On the Arizona plains I learned 
to know what an idiot I had been to throw away the better 
half of a life in a place where you have to breathe other 
peoples’ bad air. Why, there isn’t room to think in a city! 
I never used to think, or only at odd moments. I lived from 
one nervous reflex to another, and took most of my ideas 
from other folks. Now Ido my own thinking. Just try it, 
young woman; it is a great relief!” ; 
“But — but —”’ Isabelle stammered, laughing in spite 
of herself. 

“You know,’’ Renault bore on tranquilly, “there’s a new 
form of mental disease you might call ‘pavementitis’ — 
the pavement itch. When the patient has it badly, so that 
he can’t be happy when removed from his customary en- 
vironment, he is incurable. A man isn’t a sound man, nor 
a woman a healthy woman, who can’t stand alone on his 
own two legs and be nourished intellectually and emotionally 
away from the herd. ... That young fellow who has 
just gone out was a bad case of pavementitis when he came 
to me, — couldn’t breathe comfortably outside the air of New 
York. Hard worker, too. He came up here to “rest.” 
Rest! Almost nobody needs rest. What they want is 
hard work and tranquil minds. I put him on his job the 
day he came. You couldn’t drive him away now! Last 


TOGETHER 451 


fall I sent him back to see if the cure was complete. Tele- 
graphed me in a week that he was coming up, — life was 
too dull down there! ... And that little black-haired 
woman who is talking to Mrs. Pole, — similar case, only it 
was complicated. She was neurotic, hysterical, insomniac, 
melancholy, — the usual neurasthenic ticket. Had a hus- 
band who didn’t suit or a lover, I suspect, and it got fas- 
tened in the brain, —rode her. She’s my chief nurse in 
the surgical ward now, —a tremendous worker; can go 
three nights without sleep if necessary and knows enough 
to sleep soundly when she gets the chance.... Has 
relapses of pavementitis now and then, when some of her ~ 
fool friends write her; but I fix that! ... So it goes; I 
have had incurable cases of course, as in everything else. 
The only thing to do with ’em then is to send them back to 
suck their poison until it kills.” 

~The whimsical tone of irony and invective made Isabelle 
laugh, and also subtly changed her self-preoccupation. 
Evidently Dr. Renault was not a Potts to go to with a 

long story of woe. | 

“T thought it was surgery, your specialty,’’ she remarked, 
“not nervous prostration.”’ 

“We do pretty much everything here — as it is needed. 
Come in to-morrow morning sometime and look the shop 
over.” 

He rose, threw away his cigar, and at this signal the group 
scattered. Renault, Margaret, and Isabelle went back to 
the bare living room, where the doctor stood silently in 
front of the fireplace for a few minutes, as though expecting 
his guests to leave. When they started, he threw open a 
long window and beckoned to Isabelle to follow him. Out- 
side there was a broad platform running out over the crest 
of the hill on which the house was built. The land beyond 
fell away sharply, then rose in a wooded swell to the northern 
mountains. The night was dark with glittering starlight 
above, and the presence of the white masses of the hills 
could be felt rather than seen, — brooding under the stars. 


452 TOGETHER 


There was the tinkle of a sleigh-bell on the road below, — 
the only sound in the still night. 

“There!” Renault exclaimed. “Is there anything you 
would like to swap for this?” 

He breathed deeply of the frosty air. 

“It seems almost as if a voice were speaking i in the 
silence !”’ 

“Yes,” Renault assented gravely. “There 7s a voice, 
and you can hear it up here —if you listen.” 


CHAPTER LVII 


On their way home the two women discussed the doctor 
eagerly. 

“JT must have seen Dr. Renault somewhere,’ Isabelle 
said, “or rather what he might have been once. He’s a 
person !”’ 

“That is it, — he is a person, — not just a doctor or a 
clever surgeon.” 

“Has he other regular patients besides the children, the 
surgical cases?” 

“He started with those alone. But latterly, they tell 
me, he has become more interested in the nervous ward, — 
what he calls the “dotty’ ward, — where there are chiefly 
convalescent children or incurable nervous diseases of chil- 
dren. Itis wonderful what he does with them. The power 
he has over them is like the power of the old saints who 
worked miracles, — a religious power,— or the pure force of 
the will, if you prefer.” 

After her evening with Renault, Isabelle felt that Marga- 
ret’s description might not be too fervid. 

Towards morning Isabelle woke, and in the sudden clarity 
of the silent hour thoughts flowed through her with wonder- 
ful vividness. She saw Renault’s face and manner, his 
sharp eyes, his air of dictation, arrogant and at the same 
time kindly, — yes, there was a power in the man! As 
Margaret had put it, —a religious power. The word set 
loose numberless thoughts, distasteful ones, dead ones. 
She saw the respectable Presbyterian caravansary in St. 
Louis where the family worshipped, — sermons, creeds, 
dogmas, — the little stone chapel at Grafton where she had 
been confirmed, and her attempt to believe herself moved 
by some spiritual force, expressed in the formulas that the 

453 


454 TOGETHER 


old clergyman had taught her. Then the phrases rose in © 


her mind. It might have done her good once, — people 
found it helpful, — women especially in-their hours of trial. 
She disliked the idea of leaning for help on something which 
in her hours of vigor she rejected. A refuge, an explanation, 
—no, it was not possible! The story of the atonement, the 
rewards, the mystical attempt to explain the tragedy of 
life, its sorrow and pain, —no, it was childish! So the 
word “religious” had something in it repellent, sickly, 


and self-deceptive. ... Suddenly the words stood out 
sharply in her mind, — “ What we need is a new religion!” 
A new religion, — where had she heard that? ... Another 


flash in her brooding consciousness and there came the face 
of the doctor, the face of the man who had talked to her one 
Sunday afternoon at the house where there had been music. 
She remembered that she wished the music would not inter- 
rupt their conversation. Yes, he was bidding her good-by, 
at the steps, his hat raised in his hand, and he had said with 
that same whimsical smile, “What we need is a new 
religion!” It was an odd thing to say in the New York 
street, after an entirely delightful Sunday afternoon of 
music. Now the face was older, more tense, yet with 
added calm. Had he found his religion? And with a wist- 
ful desire to know what it was, the religion that made 
Renault live as he did, Isabelle dropped once more to sleep. 


When Isabelle presented herself at the doctor’s house the 
next morning, as he had suggested, the little black-haired 
nurse met her and made Renault’s excuses. The, doctor 
was occupied, but would try to join her later. Meanwhile 
would she like to look over the operating room and the 
surgical ward? The young doctor who had been afflicted 
with pavementitis —a large, florid, blond young man — 
showed her through the operating room, explaining to her 
the many devices, the endless well-thought-out detail, from 
the plumbing to the special electric lighting. 

“It’s absolutely perfect, Mrs. Lane!”’ he summed up, and 


TOGETHER 455 


when Isabelle smiled at his enthusiasm, he grew red of face 
and stuttered in his effort to make her comprehend all that 
his superlative meant. ‘I know what lam saying. I have 
been all over Europe and this country. Every surgeon who 
comes here says the same thing. You can’t even imagine 
anything that might be better. There isn’t much in the 
world where you can’t imagine a something better, an im- 
provement. There’s almost always a better to be had if you 
could get it. But here,no!... Porowitz, the great Vienna 
orthopedic surgeon, was here last winter, and he told me 
there wasn’t a hospital in the whole world where the chances 
~for recovery, taking it all round, were as large as up here in 
Grosvenor Flat, Vermont. Think of it! And there is no 
hospital that keeps a record where the percentage of suc- 
cessful operations is as high as ours. ... That’s enough to 
say, I guess,’ he concluded solemnly, wiping his brow. 

In the surgical ward the wasted, white faces of the sick 
children disturbed Isabelle. It all seemed neat, quiet, 
pleasant. But the physical dislike of suffering, cultivated 
by the refinement of a highly individualistic age, made her 
shudder. So much there was that was wrong in life to 
be made right, — partly right, never wholly right. ... It 
seemed useless, almost sentimentalism, to attempt this 
patching of diseased humanity... . 

In the convalescent ward, Margaret was sitting beside a 
cot reading to her boy. 

‘“‘He’ll be home in a few days now!” she said i in answer to 
Isabelle’s glance. ‘“‘Some day he will be a great football 
player.” 

The child colored at the reference to his ailment. 

“TI can walk now,” he said, ‘a little.” 

Dr. Renault was at the other end of the ward sitting beside 
a girl of twelve, with one arm about her thin back, talking to 
her. The child’s face was stained with half-dried tears. 
Presently the doctor took the child up and carried her to 
the window, and continued to talk to her, pointing out of 
the window. After a time he joined Isabelle, saying: — 


456 TOGETHER 


“‘T was kept from meeting you when you came by that little 
girl over there. She is, by the way, one of our most interest- 
ing cases. Came here for hip disease. She is an orphan, — 
nothing known about her parents, — probably alcoholic 
from the mental symptoms. She has hysteria and unde- 
veloped suicidal mania.’ 

“What can you do for her?” 

“What we can with medicine and surgery, and where that 
fails — we try other means.’ . 

Isabelle was eager to know what were those “ other means,” 
but the doctor was not a man to be questioned. Presently 
as he sauntered through the room he volunteered : — 

“T have been talking to her, — telling her how the hills are 
made. ... You see we have to clean out their minds as 
well as their bodies, get rid so far as we can of the muddy 
deposit, both the images associated with their environment — 
that is done by bringing them up here — and also what might 
be called inherited thought processes. Give ’em a sort of 
spiritual purge, in other words,’ he said witha smile. ‘Then 
we can build up, feed their minds something fresh. Sarah 
Stern there is an. obstinate case, — she has a deep deposit of 
ancestral gloom.” 

“But you can’t overcome the temperament, the inherited 
nature !”’ 

Renault waved his hand impatiently. 

““You’ve been told that since you were born. We have 
all grown up in that belief, — it is the curse of the day! .. . 
It can’t be done altogether — yet. Sarah may revert and 
cut her throat when she leaves here. ... But the vital 
work for medicine to-day is to see just how much can be done 
to change temperament, — inherited nature, as you call it. 
In other words, to put new forces to work in diseased brains. 
Perhaps some day we can do it all, — who knows?” 

“Plant new souls in place of the old!”’ 

Renault nodded gravely. 

“That’s the true medicine — the root medicine, — to take 
an imperfect organism and develop it, mould it to the per- 


TOGETHER 457 


fected idea. Life is plastic, — human beings are plastic, — 
that is one important thing to remember !”’ 

“ But you are a surgeon ?”’ 

Renault’s lips quivered with one of his ironical smiles. 

“T was a surgeon, just as I was a materialist. When I 
was young, I was caught by the lure of so-called science, and 
became a surgeon, because it was precise, definite, — and I 


_ am something of a dab at it now — ask the boys here! . . . 
- But surgery is artisan work. Younger hands will always 


beat you. Pallegrew in there is as good as I am now. 
There is nothing creative in surgery; it is on the order of 
mending shoes. One needs to get beyond that. ... And 
here is where we get beyond patching. .. . Don’t think we 
are Just cranks here. We do what we can with the accepted 
tools, — the knife and the pill. But we try to go farther — 
a little way.” 

They descended to the basement of the main house where 


_ the more active children were playing games. 


“We have to teach some of them the primitive instincts, — 
the play instinct, for example, — and we have a work- 
room, where we try to teach them the absorbing excite- 
ment of work. ... I am thinking of starting a school 
next. Don’t you want to try a hand at a new sort of 
education?” 

So, pausing now and then to joke with a child or speak to 
an assistant, Renault took Isabelle over his “shop” once 
more, explaining casually his purposes. As a whole, it de- 


veloped before her eyes that here was a laboratory of the 





human being, a place where by different processes the dis-_ 


' eased, the twisted, the maimed, the inhibited, the incomplete 
--were analyzed and reconstructed. As they emerged on the 
- broad platform where they had stood the night before, Isa- 


belle asked: — 

“Why is it you work only with children?” 

“ Because I started with the little beggars. .. . And they 
are more plastic, too. But some day the same sort of thing 
will be done with adults. For we are all plastic. ... 


458 TOGETHER 


Good-day !’”’ and he walked away rapidly in the direction of ' 
his office. 

Isabelle returned to the village in a strange excitement of 
impressions and thoughts. She felt as if she had been taken 
up out of the world that she had lived in and suddenly 
introduced to a planet which was motived by totally other 
ideas than those of the world she knew. Here was a life 
laboratory, a place for making over human character as well 
as tissue. And in bravado, as it were, the mere refuse of 
human material was chosen to be made anew, with happiness, 
effectiveness, health! She realized that a satisfactory un- 
derstanding of it would come slowly; but walking here in the 
winter sunshine along the village street, she had that sensa- 
tion of strangeness which the child has on coming from the 
lighted playhouse into the street. . . . The set vision that 
tormented her within — that, too, might it not be erased ? 

About the post-office people were gathered gossiping and 
laughing, waiting for the noon mail to be distributed. 
Country-women in fur coats drove up in dingy cutters to do 
their Saturday shopping. The wood-sleds went jogging past 
towards the valley. School children were recklessly sliding 
down the cross street into the main road. Sol Short was 
coming over from his shop to get his paper... Here the 
old world was moving along its wonted grooves in this back- 
water community. But over it all like the color swimming 
over the hills was SOMETHING more, — some aspect of life 
unseen! And faintly, very dimly, Isabelle began to realize 
that she had never really been alive, — these thirty years 
and more. 

‘We are all plastic,’’ she murmured, and looked away to 
the hills. 


CHAPTER LVIII 


Lire at Grosvenor moved on in a placid routine, day after 
day. What with her children and the engrossing work at 
the doctor’s Margaret was busy every morning, and Isabelle 
rarely saw her before the noon meal. Then at the plentiful 
dinner over which the blacksmith presided with a gentle 
courtesy and sweetness there was gossip of the hospital and 
the village, while Short, who had the father instinct, enter- 
tained the children. He knew all the resources of the 
country, every animal wild or tame, every rod of wood and 
pasture and hill. The little Poles opened him like an atlas 
or encyclopedia. 

“Mr. Wilson begins to haul from his lot to-morrow,” he 
would announce for their benefit. ‘I guess he’ll take you 
. up to the clearing where the men are cutting if you look for 
him sharp. And when you get there, you want to find a very 
tall man with a small head. That’s Sam Tisdell, — and you 
tell him I said he would show you the deer run and the 
yard the deer have made back there a piece behind the 
clearing.” 

Then he told them how, when he was a young man, he had 
hunted for deer on the mountains and been caught one time 
in a great snowstorm, almost losing his life. 

“The children have so much to do and to think about here 
in Grosvenor that they are no trouble at all. They never 
have to be entertained,’’ Margaret remarked. “Mr. Short 
is much better for them than a Swiss governess with three 
languages !”’ 


There were long evenings after the sixo’clock suppers, which 
the two friends spent together usually, reading or talking 
before Isabelle’s fire. Wherever the talk started, it would 

459 


460 TOGETHER 


often gravitate to Renault, his personality dominating like 
some mountain figure the community. Margaret had been 
_absorbed into the life of the hospital with its exciting yet 
orderly movement. There were new arrivals, departures, 
difficult cases, improvements and failures to record. She 
related some of the slowly wrought miracles she had wit- 
nessed during the months that she had been there. 

“Tt all sounds like magic,’’ Isabelle had said doubtfully. 

“No, that is just what it isn’t,” Margaret protested; ‘‘ the 
doctor’s processes are not tricks, — they are evident.” 

- And the two discussed endlessly these ‘‘ processes’”’ where- 
by minds were used to cure matter, the cleansing of the 
soul,—thought substitution, suggestion, the relationship 
of body and mind. And through all the talk, through the 
busy routine of the place, inthe men and women working in the 
hospital, there emerged always that something unseen, — 
Idea, Will, Spirit, the motiving force of the whole. Isabelle 
felt this nowhere more strongly than in the change in Margaret 
herself. It was not merely that she seemed alert and active, 
wholly absorbed in the things about her, but more in the 
marvellous content which filled her. And, as Isabelle re- 
flected, Margaret was the most discontented woman she had 
known; even before she married, she was ever hunting for 
something. 

“But you can’t stay here always,”’ Isabelle said to her one 
evening. ‘‘ You will have to go back to the city to educate 
the children if for no other reason.” 

“Sometimes I think I shan’t go back! Why should LP 

. . You know I have almost no money to live on.” (Isa- 
belle suspected that Larry’s last years had eaten into the 
little that had been left of Margaret’s fortune). ‘The chil- 
dren will go to school here. It would be useless to educate 
them above their future, which must be very plain.” 

“But you have a lot of relatives who would gladly help 
you — and them.” 

“They might, but I don’t think I want their help — even 
for the children. Iam not so sure that what we call advan- 


TOGETHER 461 


tages, a good start in life, and all that, is worth while. JI had 
the chance — you had it, too — and what did we make of it ?”’ 

“Our children need not repeat our mistakes,’’ Isabelle 
replied with a sigh. 

“Tf they were surrounded with the same ideas, they 
probably would!” 

“The doctor has thrown his charm over you!”’ 

“He has saved my life!’’ Margaret murmured; “at least 
he has shown me how to save it,”’ she corrected. 

There it was again, the mysterious Peace that possessed her, 
that had touched Margaret’s hard, defiant spirit and tamed 
it. But Isabelle, remembering the letters with the Panama 
postmark she had seen lying on the hall table, wondered, 
and she could not help saying : — 

“You are young yet, Margaret, — oh, it might be — hap- 
piness, all that you have missed !”’ 

“No!” Margaret replied, with a little smile. “I — think 
not!” 

She closed her eyes as if she were contemplating that other 
happiness, and after a silence she opened them and touched 
Isabelle’s hand. 

“T want to tell you something, dear. ... I loved Rob 
Falkner, very much, the most a woman can.” 

“Tknewit!... Ifeltit.... MThatit only might be!” 

“He came to me,”’ Margaret continued, ‘‘ when I was hard 
and bitter about life, when I was dead. .... It was the 
kind of love that women dream of, ours, — the perfect thing 
you feel in your heart has always been there, —that takes all 
of you! ... It was good for us both— he needed me, and 
I needed him.” 

“Margaret !”’ 

“I was wonderfully happy, with a dreadful happiness that 
was two parts pain, pain for myself, and more pain for him, 
because he needed me, you understand, and it could not be 
—J could not live with him and give him the food he hun- 
gered for — love.” 

Isabelle kissed the wistful face. ‘‘I know,” she said. 


462 TOGETHER 


““T want to tell you more — but you may not understand ! 
. Hehad to goaway. It was best; it was his work, his 
life, and I should have been a poor weak fool to let our love 
stand in the way. So it was decided, and I urged him to go. 
He came to’see me at Bedmouth before he left, — a few days, 
a few hours of love. And we saw how it would have to be, 
that we should have to go on loving and living in the spirit, 
for as long as our love lasted, apart. We faced that. But 
— but —”’ 

Margaret hesitated and then with shining eyes went on in 
a low voice. 

“Tt was not enough what we had had! _ I was not ready to 
let him go, to see him go — without all. He never asked — 
I gave him all. We went away to have our love by ourselves, 
— to live for each other just afew days. He took me away 
in his boat, and for a few days, a few nights, we had our love— 
we saw our souls.” 

She waited, breathing fast, then controlled herself. 

“Those hours were more than ordinary life. They do not 
seem to me real even now, or perhaps they are the most real 
thing in all [have known. It was love before the parting — 
before Fate. . .. When it was all over, we went back to 
earth. I returned to Mother Pole’s house in Bedmouth, 
and I went up to the children’s room and took my baby in 
my arms and kissed her, my little girl. And I knew that it 
had been right, all pure and holy, and I was’ glad, oh, so 
glad that it had been, that we had had the courage!” 

Isabelle pressed the hand she held close to her breast and 
watched the shining face. 

“And I have never felt differently — never for one mo- 
ment since. It was the greatest thing that ever came to me, 
and it seems to me that I should never really have lived if it 
had not been for those days — those nights and days — 
and the heaven that we saw!”’ 

“Then how can you speak as if life were ended now—” 

Margaret held her hand before her face and did not answer. 

“It might be possible — for you both... . She never 


TOGETHER 463 


really cared for Rob, — she left him and took her child when 
they sold their house — because she was disappointed, And 
she has refused to go to him ever since.” 

“T know all that,’?’ Margaret murmured; ‘‘that is not it 
wholly. I can’t tell. I don’t know yet. It is not clear. 

But I know that Iam proud and glad of what has been, 
— of our love in its fulness and glory. And I know it was 
not sin! Nothing can make it so to me.” 

She had risen and stood proudly before Isabelle. 

“Tt has made living possible for him and for me, — it has 
made it something noble and great, to feel this in our souls. 
abe I wanted to tell you; I thought you would under- 
stand, and I did not want you to be wrong about me; — not 
to know me all!”’ 

She knelt and buried her head in Isabelle’s lap, and when 
she raised her face there were tears falling from the eyes. 

“T don’t know why I should cry!” she exclaimed with a 
smile. “I don’t often. ... It was all so beautiful. But 
we women cry when we can’t express ourselves any other 
way !”’ 

““T shall always hope —”’ 

Margaret shook her head. 

“T don’t know. ... There are other things coming, — 
another revelation, perhaps! I don’t think of what will be, 
dear.” 

But womanwise, Isabellethought on after Margaret had left, 
of Falkner and Margaret, of theirlove. And why shouldn’t it 
come to them, she asked herself? The other, Falkner’s mar- 
riage, had been a mistake for both, a terrible mistake, and 
they had both paid forit. Bessie could have made it possible 
if she had wanted to, if she had had it in her. She had 
her chance. For him to go back.to her now, with the gulf 
between them of all this past, was mere folly, — Just con- 
ventional wrong-headedness. And it would probably be no 
better for Bessie if he were to make the sacrifice. ... The 
revelation that Margaret had hinted of had not come to Isa- 
belle. She lay awake thinking with aching heart of her own 


464 TOGETHER 


story, — its tragic ending. But he was not a man, — that, 
too, had been a mistake! | 


Isabelle, largely left to herself, for occupation drove about 
the snowy hills, sometimes taking with her for company one of 
the convalescents or a nurse, often alone, liking the solitude 
of the winter spaces. Sometimesshe went to the blacksmith’s 
shop and talked with the old man, learning the genealogy and 
the sociology of the neighborhood. The text for Sol Short’s 
wisdom was ever at hand in the passers-by. Ending one of 
his transcripts, he made a phrase that lingered in Isabelle’s 
mind long afterward. ‘So she was left a charge upon the 
property,” he said of an old woman that had come out of 
one of the village houses. ‘‘ Aunt Mehitabel went with the 
house. Whenit was sold, shehad to be taken over by the new 
owner, and her keep provided. And there she is now, an old 
woman in ill health and ill temper. I don’t know as there is 
a worse combination.” ... 

“IT wonder why I stay,” Isabelle said to Margaret after 
nearly two months had slipped by. ‘I am quite rested, as 
well as I shall ever be, I believe. Youdon’t need me. Nobody 
does exactly! Molly writes me very contented little letters. 
Mother is staying with her, and she is at the party age, and 
would be terribly bored to come here, as you suggested. John 
isin St. Louis; he seems to have a good deal to do out there 
this winter. So you see my little world gets on perfectly 
without me.” 

‘Better stay here, then,’’ Margaret urged, “until spring. 
It will do you good. You haven’t exhausted the doctor 
yet!” 

‘“‘T almost never see him, and when he does remember me 
he chafis me as if I were a silly child. No, I think I will go 
next week.” 

But she did not wish to leave. The winter peace of the 
little village had been like an enveloping anodyne to her 
weary body and mind. Removed from all her past, from 
the sights and the people that suggested those obsessing 


TOGETHER 465 


thoughts which had filled her waking hours with dreariness, 
she had sunk into the simple routine of Grosvenor as the 
tired body sinks into a soft bed. The daily sight of the snowy 
fields, the frozen hillsides black with forests, and the dry 
spirituous air, lifted her. Now and then the effect of the 
anodyne wore off and the old gnawing pain, or a sodden sense 
of futility, overwhelmed her afresh. “It will never get 
straight!” she said, thinking in the terms of Potts’s specifics. 
“T am somehow wrong, and I must go all my life with this 
torture — or worse — until I die!’’ And the whole pano- 
rama of her little life would unroll before her in the sleepless 
hours of the still night: her girl ambitions, her mistaken 
marriage, her striving for experience, for life, to satisfy — 
what? Then her mistaken love, and Vickers’s sacrifice, and 
the blackness afterwards, — the mistake of it all! “They’ll 
be better without me, — mother and Molly and John! Let 
me die!’”’ she cried. Then illogically she would think of 
Renault and wonder what he could do for her. But she 
shrank from baring herself before his piercing gaze. “He 
would say I was a fool, and he would be right!” 

So she went out into the cold country and walked miles 
over the frozen fields through the still woods, trying to forget, 
only to return still ridden by her thoughts, — bitter tears 
for Vickers, sometimes almost reproach for his act. “If 
he had let me plunge to my fate, it would have been better 
than this! I might never have known my mistake, — it 
would have been different, all of it different. Now there is 
nothing!’’ And at the end of one of these black moods she 
resolved to return to her world and “go through the motions 
as others do. What else? Perhaps it will be better when I 
am distracted. Potts will give me something to brace 
PIGS ait 

But Isabelle did not return to the city and get that pre- 
scription from the great Potts. 


CHAPTER LIX 


Just as Isabelle had completed her packing on Sunday 
afternoon, a message came to her from Dr. Renault through 
Margaret. ‘‘We need another woman, — two of our nurses 
have been called away and a third is sick. Will you give 
us some help?” 

“T am going up myself for the night,’ Margaret added. 
“They are badly pushed, — six new cases the last three 
days.” 

So the night found Isabelle under the direction of Mrs. 
Felton, the little black-haired woman whose “case’”’ the 
doctor had analyzed for her. It was a long night, and 
the next morning, all the experienced nurses being needed 
at an operation, Isabelle went on. The day was full 
and also the next two. The hospital force was inadequate, 
and though the doctor had telegraphed for help there would 
be no relief for a week. So Isabelle was caught up in the 
pressing activity of this organism and worked by it, impelled 
without her own will, driven hard as all around her 
were driven by the circumstances behind her. Dr. Renault 
abhorred noise, disorder, excitement, confusion of any kind. 
All had to run smoothly and quietly as if in perfect condition. 
He himself was evident, at all hours of day or night, chaffing, 
dropping his ironical comments, listening, directing, — the 
inner force of the organism. One night the little nurse 
dropped asleep, clearly worn out, and Isabelle sent her to 
bed. The ward was quiet; there was nothing to be done. 
Isabelle, pacing to and fro in the glass sun parlor to keep 
herself awake, suddenly became aware of the stillness within 
her. It was as if some noisy piece of machinery had ceased 
to revolve without her having noticed it. It was possible 
for her in this quiet moment to realize this: for the first time 

466 


TOGETHER 467 


in five days she had not thought of herself. For five days 
she had not consciously thought! Doubtless she would 
have to pay for this debauch of work. She would collapse. 
But for five days she had not known whether she felt ill or 
well, was happy or distressed. Excitement — to be paid 
for! She shrank from the weary round of old thought that 
must come, the revolution of the wheels within. For five 
days she had not thought, she had not cared, she had not 
known herself! That must be the opiate of the poor, driven 
by labor to feed and clothe themselves; of the ambitious, — 


driven by hope and desire. .. . She must work, too; work 
was a good thing. Why had Potts not included it in his 
panaceas?... 


Later when she walked back into the still ward, she thought 
she heard a stifled breathing, but when she went the rounds 
of the cots, all was still. It was not until nearly morning that 
she noticed something wrong with alittle boy, observing the 
huddled position of the limbs drawn up beneaththe blanket. 
She felt of his face —it was cold. Frightened, she hurried to 
the bell to summon the night doctor. As she reached it 
Renault entered the ward and with a warning hand brought 
her back to the cot. He put his fingers swiftly here and 
there on the child’s body. 

“Where is Mrs. Felton?’’ he demanded severely. 

‘““She was so worn out I persuaded her to get some rest. 
Have I neglected anything? — is anything wrong?”’ 

“The child is dead,” Renault replied, straightening him- 
self and covering up the little form. 

“Oh, I have —done something wrong 

“Tt would have made no difference what you did,” the 
doctor replied dryly. ‘Nothing would have made any 
difference. There was'the millionth part of a chance, and 
it was not for him.”’ 

As they stood looking down at the dead face, it seemed to 
Isabelle that suddenly he had become a person, this dead 
child, with his lost millionth of a chance, — not merely one 
of the invalids sleeping in the room. For this brief moment 


1”? 


468 TOGETHER 


when life had ceased to beat in his frail body, and before 
decay had begun, there was an individuality given him that 
he had never achieved in life. 

“Poor little fellow!’’ Isabelle murmured softly. ‘‘He 
must have suffered so much.” Then with that common 
consolation with which the living evade the thought of death, 
she added, ‘‘He has escaped more pain; it is better so, 
perhaps !”’ 

“No — that is wrong !”’ 

Renault, standing beside the bed, his arms folded across 
his breast, looked up from the dead child straight into the 
woman’s eyes. 

“That is false!’’ he cried with sudden passion. ‘ Life is 
Goop — all of it — for every one.”’ 

He held her eyes with his glance while his words rever- 
berated through her being like the crEepDo of a new faith. 


When another nurse had come to relieve Isabelle, she left 
the ward with the doctor. As they went through the 
passageway that led to the house, Renault said in his usual 
abrupt tone: — . 

“You had better run home, Mrs. Lane, and get some sleep. 
To-morrow will be another hard day.” 

She wheeled suddenly and faced him. 

“How dare you say that life is good for any other human 
being! What do you know of another’s agony, — so misery 
that existence may mean, the daily woe?” 

Her passionate burst of protest died in a sob. 

‘““T say it because I believe it, because I know it!” 

“No one can know that for another.” 

“For animals the account of good and evil may be struck, 
the pains set against the satisfactions that life offers. When 
we judge that the balance is on the wrong side, we are merci- 
ful, — put the creature out of its misery, as we say. But no 
human being is an animal in that sense. And no human be- 
ing can cast his balance of good and evil in that mechanical 
way — nor any one else for him!” 


TOGETHER 469 


“But one knows for himself! When you suffer, when all 
is blank within and you cry as Job cried, — ‘would God it 
were morning, and in the morning would God it were night !’ 
then life is not good. If you could be some one else for a 
few hours, then you might understand — what defeat and 
living death —”’ 

Oh, if she could tell! The impulse to reveal surged in 
her heart, that deep human desire to call to another across 
the desert, so that some one besides the silent stars and the 
wretched Self may know! Renault waited, his compelling 
eyes on her face. 

“When you have lost the most in vour life — hope, love! 
When you have killed the best!’’ she murmured brokenly. 
“Oh,I can’t say it! . . . I can never say it — tell the whole.” 

Tears fell, tears of pity for the dead child, for herself, for 
the fine-wrought agony of life. 

“But I know!”’ Renault’s voice, low and calm, came as it 
were from a shut corner of his heart. ‘I have felt and I 
have seen — yes, Defeat, Despair, Regret — all the black 
ghosts that walk.” 

Isabelle raised her eyes questioningly. 

“‘ And it is because of that, that I can raise my face to the 
stars and say, ‘It is good, all good — all that life contains.’ 
And the time will come when you will repeat my words and 
say to them, ‘Amen.’”’ 

“That I could!”’ 

“We are not animals, — there is the Unseen behind the 
Seen; the Unknown behind the Observed. There is a Spirit 
that rises within us to slay the ghosts, to give them the lhe. 


Call upon it, and it will answer. ... For Peace is the 
rightful heritage of every soul that is born.” 
“Not Peace.” 


“Yes, —I say Peace! Health, perhaps; happiness, per- 
haps; efficiency, perhaps. But Peace always lies within the 
grasp of whomsoever will stretch out his hand to possess 
1 ERE 

As they stopped at the house door and waited in the deep 


470 TOGETHER 


silence of the dark morning, Renault put his hands on Isa- 
belle’s shoulders: — 

“Call to it, and it will come from the depths! . . . Good- 
night.” 

There in the still dawning hour, when the vaulted heavens 
seemed brooding close to the hills and the forests, these two 
affirmations of a creed rang in Isabelle’s soul like the rever- 
berating chords of some mystic promise: — . 

“Life is good — all of it — for every one!”’ And, “ Peace 
is the rightful heritage of every soul. It lies within the grasp 
of whomsoever will stretch out his hand to possess it.” 

It was still within her. 


CHAPTER LX 


Wuen Isabelle woke, the morning sun fretted the green 
shutters. She was tired in every limb, — limp, content to 
lie in bed while Mrs. Strong lighted the fire, threw open the 
shutters, and brought breakfast and the mail. Through the 
east windows the sunstreamed in solidly, flooding the counter- 
pane, warming the faded roses of the wall paper. A bit of 
the north range of hills, the flat summit of Belton’s Top with 
a glittering ice-cap, she could see above the gray gable of 
the barn. The sky was a soft, cloudless blue, and the eaves 
were busily dripping in a drowsy persistency. 

She liked to lie there, watching the sun, listening to the 
drip, her letters unopened, her breakfast untouched. She 
was delightfully empty of thoughts. But one idea lay in her 
mind, — she should stay on, here, just here. Since she had 
packed her trunk the Sunday before, a great deal seemed to 
have happened, — a space had been placed between the outer 
world that she had restlessly turned back towards and her- 
self. Some day she should go back to that other world — to 
Molly and John and all the rest. But not now—no!... 

As she lay there, slowly the little things of the past weeks 
since she had travelled the cold road from White River — 
the impressions, the sights, the ideas — settled into ‘her 
thought, pushing back ihe obstinate obsessions that had 
possessed her for months. The present began to be impor- 
tant, to drive out the past. Outside in the street some one 
whistled, the bells of the passing sleds jangled, a boy’s treble 
halloa sounded far away, — unconscious voices of the living 
world, like the floating clouds, the noise of running water, 
the drip of the hae snow on the eaves, — so good it all 
was and real! . 

471 


472 TOGETHER 


Margaret had found that Peace the doctor had spoken of, 
Margaret whose delicate curving lips had always seemed to 
her the symbol of discontent, of the inadequacy of life. 
Margaret had found it, and why not she? ... That ex- 
plained the difference she felt these days in Margaret. There 
had always been something fine and sweet in the Southern 
woman, something sympathetic in her touch, in the tone of 
her voice even when she said cynical things. Now Margaret 
never said bitter things, even about the wretched Larry. 
She had always been a listener rather than a talker, but now 
there was a balm in her very presence, a touch upon the spirit, 
like a cool hand on the brow. Yes! She had found that 
rightful heritage of Peace and breathed it all around her, like 
warmth and light. 

Margaret came in with the noon mail, which she had col- 
lected from the box in the post-office. As she tossed the 
papers and letters on the bed, Isabelle noticed another 
of the oblong letters in the familiar handwriting from 
Panama... . 

“Or is it that ?’”’ she asked herself for a moment, and then 
was ashamed. The smile, the clear look out of the deep eyes, 
the caressing hand that stroked her face, all said no, — it 
was not that! And if it were, it must be good. 

“So you are going to stay with us a while longer, Isabelle. 

I shall unpack your trunk and hide it,’’ Margaret said 
with smiling conviction. 

“Yes, —I shall stay, for the present. ... Now I must 
get into my clothes. I’ve been lazing away the whole morn- 
ing here — not even reading my letters!” 

“That’s right,’ Margaret drawled. “Doing nothing is 
splendid for the temperament. That’s why the darkies have 
such delightful natures. They can sit whole days in the 
sun and never think a thought.’”’ With her hand on the 
door she turned: ‘ You must send for Molly, —it will be 
good for her to forget the dancing lessons and frocks. My 
children will take her down to Mill Hill and make a boy of 
her.” 


TOGETHER 473 


“Well, — but she will be a nuisance, I am afraid. She is 
such a young lady.” ... 

At last Isabelle tore open a letter from her husband, one 
that Margaret had just brought. It was concise and dry, 
in the economical epistolary style into which they had 
dropped with each other. He was glad to hear that her rest 
in the country was doing her good. If it agreed with her 
and she was content, she had better stay on for the present. 
He should be detained in the West longer than he had ex- 
pected. There were important suits coming on against the 
railroad in which he should be needed, hearings, etc. At the 
close there was an unusually passionate sentence or two about 
“the public unrest and suspicion,’’ and the President and the 
newspapers. “They seem to like the smell of filth so much 
that they make a supply when they can’t find any.” 

Broils of the world! The endless struggle between those 
who had and those who envied them what they had. There 
was another side, she supposed, and in the past Cairy had 
been at some pains to explain that other side to her. Her 
husband must of course be prejudiced, like her father; they 
saw it all tooclose. However, it was a man’s affair to settle, 
unless a woman wished to play Conny’s réle and move her 
husband about the board. Broils! How infinitely far away it 
seemed, all the noise of the world! . . . She began to dress 
hurriedly to report at the hospital for the afternoon. As she 
glanced again at her husband’s letter, she saw a postscript, 
with some scraps of St. Louis gossip: — 

“T hear that Bessie is to get a divorce from Falkner. I 


wonder if it can be true. ... I saw Steve in the street 
last week. From what I learn the lumber business isn’t 
flourishing. ... Pity he didn’t swallow his scruples and 


stay with us where he would be safe!” 

Poor Alice —if Steve should fail now, with all those 
children! And then she remembered what Alice Johnston 
had said to Vickers, “ You see we have been poor so much of 
the time that we know what it is like.”’? It would take a good 
deal to discourage Alice and Steve. But John must keep 


474 TOGETHER 


an eye on them, and try to help Steve. John, it occurred 
to her then for the first time, was that kind, — the sub- 
stantial sort of man that never needed help himself, on which 
others might lean. 


So Isabelle stayed in the mountain village through the 
winter months. Molly came with her governess, and both 
endeavored to suppress politely their wonder that any one 
could imprison herself in this dreary, cold place. The regular 
nurses came back to the hospital, but Isabelle, once having 
been drawn in, was not released. 

‘“He’s a hard master,’’ Margaret said of the doctor. “If 
he once gets his hand on you, he never lets go — until he is 
ready to.” | | 

Apparently Renault was not ready to let go of Isabelle. 
Without explaining himself to her, he kept her supplied with 
work, and though she saw him often every day, theyrarely 
talked, never seriously. He seemed to avoid after that first 
night any opportunity for personal revelation. The doctor 
was fond of jokes and had the manner of conducting his 
affairs as if they were a game in which he took a detached 
and whimsical -interest. If there was sentiment in his 
nature, an emotional feeling towards the work he was 
doing, it was well concealed, first with drollery, and then with 
scientific application. So far as any one could observe the 
daily routine, there was nothing, at least in the surgical side 
of the hospital, that was not coldly scientific. As Renault 
had said, “We do what we can with every instrument 
known to man, every device, drug, or pathological theory.” 
And his mind seemed mostly engrossed with this “artisan” 
side of his profession, in applying his skill and learning and 
directing the skill and learning of others. It was only in 
the convalescent ward that the other side showed itself, 
— that belief in the something spiritual, beyond the 
physical, to be called upon. One of the doctors, a young 
Norwegian named Norden, was his assistant in this work. 
And every one in the place felt that Norden was closest 


TOGETHER 475 


of all to the doctor. Norden in his experiments with ner- 
vous diseases used hypnotism, suggestion, psychotherapy, 
—all the modern forms of supernaturalism. His attitude 
was ever, as he said to Isabelle, “It might be — who knows?” 
— “There is truth, some little truth in all the ages, in all the 
theories and beliefs.’”’ ‘Isabelle had a strong liking for this 
uncouth Northman with his bony figure and sunken eyes 
that seemed always burning with an unattained desire, an 
inexpressible belief. Norden said to her, the only way 
is “to recognize both soul and body in dealing with the 
organism. Medicine is a Religion, a Faith, a great Solution. 
It ought to be supported by the state, free to all... . The 
old medicine is either machine work or Notre like the 
blood-letting of barbers.”? ... 

It was an exhilarating place to live in, -Renault’s hos- 
pital,—an atmosphere of intense Activity: mental and 
physical, with a spirit of some large, unexpressed truth, a 
passionate faith, that raised the immediate finite and petty 
task to a step in the glorious ranks of eternity. The per- 
sonality of Renault alone kept this atmosphere from becom- 
ing hectic and sentimental. He held this ship that he 
steered so steadily in the path of fact that there was no 
opportunity for emotional explosions. But he himself was 
the undefined incarnate Faith that made the voyage of the 
last importance to every one concerned. Small wonder 
that the doctors and nurses — the instruments of his will — 
“could not be driven away’?! They had caught the note, 
each one of them, of that unseen power and lived always 
in the hope of Greate: revelations to come. 

As the order of the days settled into a rhythmic routine 
with the passing of the weeks, Isabelle Lane desired more and 
more to come closer to this man who had touched her to the 
quick, to search more clearly for her personal Solution which 
evaded her grasp. There were many questions she wished 
to have answered! But Renault had few intimate moments. 
He avoided personalities, as if they were a useless drain 
upon energy. His message was delivered at casual mo- 


476 TOGETHER 


ments. One day he came up behind Isabelle in the ward, 
and nodding towards Molly, who was reading a story to one 
of the little girl patients, said : — 

“So you have put daughter to some use?” 

“Yes!’’ Isabelle exclaimed irritably. “I found her going 
over her dresses for the tenth time and brought her along. 

. . However does she get that air of condescension ! 
Lode at her over there playing the grand lady in her pretty 
frock for the benefit of these children. Little siya She 
didn’t get that from me.’ 

“ Don’t worry. Wait a day or two and you will see the 
small girl she is reading to hand her one between the eyes,” 
Renault joked. ‘“She’s on to Miss Molly’s patronage and 
‘airs, and she has Spanish blood in her. Look at her mouth 
now. Doesn’t it say, ‘I am something of a swell myself’?”’ 

“They say children are a comfort!’ Isabelle remarked © 
disgustedly. ‘They are first a care and then a torment. 
In them you see all that you dislike in yourself popping up 
—and much more besides. Molly thinks of nothing but 
clothes and parties and etiquette. She has twice the social 
instinct I ever had. I can see myself ten years hence being 
led around by her through all the social stuff I have learned 
enough to avoid.” 

“You can’t be sure.” 

“They change, but not the fundamentals. Molly is a little 
mondaine, — she showed it in the cradle.”’ 

“But you don’t know what is inside her besides that 
tendency, any more than you know now what is inside your- 
self and will come out a year hence.’’ 

“Tf I don’t know myself at my age, I must be an idiot!” 

“No one knows the whole story ‘ae the end. Even 
really aged people develop surprising qualities of character. 
It’s a Christmas box — the inside of us; you can always 
find another package if you put your hand in deep enough 
and feel around. Molly’s top package seems to be finery. 
She may dip lower down.” 

‘So I am dipping here in Grosvenor,’ thought Isabelle, 


TOGETHER 477 


‘and I may find the unexpected!’ ... This was an empty 
quarter of an hour before dinner and Renault was talkative. 

“Who knows?” he resumed whimsically. ‘“ You might 
have a good sense of humor somewhere, Mrs. Lane, pretty 
well buried.” 

Isabelle flushed with mortification. 

“You are witty enough, young woman. But I mean real 
humor, not the rattle of dry peas in the pod that goes for 
humor at a dinner party. Do you know why I keep Sam 
about the place, — that fat lazy beggar who takes half an hour 
to fetch an armfulof wood? Because he knows how to laugh. 
He is a splendid teacher of mirth. When I hear him laugh 
down in the cellar, I always open the door and try to get the 
whole of it. It shakes my stomach sympathetically. The 
old cuss knows it, too, which is apity! ... Well, young 
mademoiselle over there is play-acting to herself; she thinks 
she will be a grand lady likemamma. God knows what she 
will find more interesting before she reaches the bottom of the 
box. Don’t worry! And did you ever think where they 
catch the tricks, these kids? If you went into it, you could 
trace every one down to some suggestion; it wouldn’t take 
you long to account for that high and mighty air in your child 
that you don’t fancy. If you don’t want her to pick up 
undesirable packages, see that they aren’t handed out to 
her.”’ 

“But she has had the best —”’ 

“Yes, of course. Lord! the best! Americans are mad 
for the best. Which means the highest priced. I’ve no 
doubt, Mrs. Lane, you have given Molly all the disadvan- 
tages... . Did you ever sit down for five minutes and 
ask yourself seriously what is the best, humanly speaking, 
for that child? What things are best any way? ... Do 
you want her to end where you are at your age?”’ 

Isabelle shook her head sadly : — 

“No, — not that!”’ 

“Cultivate the garden, then. ... Or, to change the 
figure, see what is handed. out to her. ... For every 


478 TOGETHER 


thought and feeling in your body, every act of your will, 
makes its trace upon her, —upon countless others, but 
upon her first because she is nearest.” 

Molly, having closed her book and said good-evening to the 
little patient, came up to her mother. 

“Tt is time, I think, mamma, for me to go home to dress 
for dinner.’”’ She looked at the little watch pinned to her 
dress. Renault and Isabelle laughed heartily. 

“What pebble that you tossed into the pool produced that 
ripple, do you think?” the doctor quizzed, twirling Molly 
about by her neck, much to her discomfort. 

“He treats me like a child, too,’’ Isabelle complained to 
Margaret; “gives me a little lesson now and then, and then 
says ‘Run along now and be a good girl.’” 

‘Tt is a long lesson,’’? Margaret admitted, “learning how 
to live, especially when you begin when we did. But after 
you have turned the pages for a while, somehow it counts.” 


4 


CHAPTER LXI 


Tue first of March was still deep winter in Grosvenor, 
but during the night the southwest wind had begun to blow, 
coming in at Isabelle’s window with the cool freshness of 
anticipated spring. The day was calm and soft, with films 
of cloud floating over the hills, and the indefinable suggestion 
of change in the air, of the breaking of the frost. The 
southwest wind had brought with it from the low land- the 
haze, as if it had come from far warm countries about the _ 
Gulf, where the flowers were already blooming and the birds 
preparing for, the northward flight. It touched the earth 
through the thick mantle of ice and snow, and underneath 
in the rocky crust of frozen ground there was the movement 
of water. The brooks on the hills began to gurgle below 
the ice. 

Up there in the north the snow had come early in the 
autumn, covering as with a warm blanket this rocky crust 
before the frost could strike deep. “An early spring,” Sol 
Short announced at dinner, a dreamy look in his eyes, like 
the soft sky outside, the look of unconscious gladness that 
rises in man at the thought of the coming year, the great 
revival of life... . That afternoon Margaret and Isabelle 
droveover thesnowy upland, where the deep drifts in the fields 
had shrivelled perceptibly, sucked by the warm sun above 
and the opening earth beneath. The runners of the sleigh 
cut into the trodden snow, and in the sheltered levels of the 
road the horse’s feet plashed in slush. The birches and 
alders lifted their bare stems hardily from the retreating 
dr:fts. Soft violet lights hovered in the valleys. 

“It is coming, Spring!’’ Margaret cried. 

479 


480 TOGETHER 


“Remember, Mr. Short said there would be many a freeze 
before it really came to stay!” 

“Yes, but it is the first call; I feel it all through me.” 

The week before Ned had left the hospital, and for 
the first time in three years had sat at the table with his 
brother and sister. His face had lost wholly the gray look 
of disappointed childhood. Spring, arrested, was coming 
to him at last. ... 

As they climbed upward into the hills the stern aspect of 
winter returned, with the deep drifts of snow, the untracked 
road. When they topped the Pass and looked down over 
the village and beyond to the northern mountains, the wind 
caught the sharp edges of the drifts and swept a snowy foam 
in their faces. But the sun was sinking into a gulf of misty 
azure and gold, and the breath of awakening earth was rising 
to meet the sun. 

Up here it was still winter, the Past; beneath was the sign 
of change, the coming of the New. And as Isabelle contem- 
plated the broad sweep below, her heart was still, waiting 
for whatever should come out of the New. 

The sun fell behind the Altar, as they called the flat top 
of Belton’s Mountain, and all about the hills played the 
upward radiance from its descending beams. . .. Margaret 
touched the loafing horse with the whip, and he jogged down 
into the forest-covered road. 

“Rob Falkner lands to-day in New York,’ Margaret re- 
marked with a steady voice. 

Isabelle started from her revery and asked: — 

“Does he mean to go back to Panama?”’ 

“T don’t believe he knows yet. The life down there is, of 
course, terribly lonely and unfruitful. The work is interest- 
ing. I think he would like to go on with it until he had 
finished his part. But there are changes; the man he went 
out with has resigned.”’ 

Margaret wanted to talk about him, apparently, for she 
continued : — 

“He has done some very good work, — has been in charge 


TOGETHER 481 


of a difficult cut, — and he has been specially mentioned 
several times. Did you see the illustrated article in the 
last People’s? There were sketches and photographs of his 
section. ... But hehasn’t been well lately, had a touch of 
fever, and needs a rest.” 

“My husband wrote that they were to be divorced — he 
had heard so.” 

“TI don’t believe it,’’ Margaret replied evenly. “His wife 
hasn’t been down there. . . . It isn’t exactly the place for a 
woman, at least for one who can’t stand monotony, loneli- 
ness, and hardship. She has been in Europe with her mother, 
this last year.” : 

“You know I used to know her very well years ago. 
She was very pretty then. Everybody liked Bessie,” Isa- 
belle mused. 

And later she remarked : — : 

“Singular that her marriage should be such a failure.”’ 

“Is it singular that any given marriage should be a 
failure ?’’ Margaret asked with a touch of her old irony. “It 
is more singular to me that any marriage, made as they 
must be made to-day, should be anything but a dismal 
failure.” 

“But Bessie was the kind to be adored. She was pretty, 
and clever, and amusing, — a great talker and crazy about 
people. She had real social instinct, — the kind you read of 
in books, you know. She could make her circle anywhere. 
She couldn’t be alone five minutes, — people clustered 
around her like bees. Her life might have been a romance, 
you would suppose, — pretty girl, poor, marries an ambitious, 
clever man, who arrives with her social help, goes into politics 
— oh, anything you will!” 

“ But the real thing,’’ Margaret observed. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Love! ... Love that understands and helps.” 

“Well, I saw the most dazzling future for her when she 
used to give garden parties in Torso, with only two unat- 
tached men who were possible in the place! And at least 

21 


482 TOGETHER 


she might have had a small home in the suburbs and an ador- 

ing husband home at five-thirty, — but she wasn’t that kind. 
. Poor Bess! I am sorry for her.” 

“TI suppose the reason why a man and a woman hurt 


instead of. help each other in marriage is never known> 


) 


to any one but themselves,’ Margaret observed dryly, 
urging on the horse. ‘And perhaps not even to them- 
selves!” 

There was a change in Margaret, an inner ferment that 
displayed itself in the haze in her clear eyes, — the look 
of one whose mind broods over the past, —a heightened 
color, a controlled restlessness of mood. ‘No, it is not 
settled,’ thought Isabelle. ‘Poor Margaret!’ She went 


about her many duties with the same silent sureness, the — 
same poise as before. Whatever was happening to her was — 


according to the discipline of her nature, controlled, sup- 
pressed. ‘If she would only splutter,’ Isabelle wished, 
‘instead of looking like a glowing sphinx!’ 

‘‘Margaret!’’ she exclaimed in the evening, after a long 
silence between them. “You are so young —so pretty 
these days !”’ 

“You think so? Thanks!’ Margaret replied, stretching 
her thin arms above her head, which was crushed against one 
of Mrs. Short’s hard pillows. ‘I suppose it is the Indian 
summer, the last warm glow before the end!’’ She opened 
her trembling lips in one of her ironical smiles. ‘There 
always comes a time of ripeness to a woman before she goes 
_ over the hill into old age.” 

“Nonsense! You are younger than you were twelve 
years ago!” 

“Yes, lam younger in a sense than I ever was. Iam well 
and strong, and I am in equilibrium, as I never was before. 

And it’s more than that. We become more vital if 
we survive the tangle of youth. We see more — we feel 
more! When I hear girls talk about love, I always want to 
say: ‘What do you know, what can you know about it! 
Love isn’t born in a woman before she is thirty, — she hasn’t 


TOGETHER 483 


the power. She can have children, but she can’t love a 
man.,’”’ 

Margaret pressed her hands tensely together and mur- 
mured to herself, “‘ For love is born with the soul, — and is 
the last thing that comes into the heart !”’ 

Isabelle with caressing impulsiveness put her arms 
about the slight figure. 

“T love you, Margaret; it seems as if you were the only 
person I really loved now! It has been heaven to be with 
you all these weeks. You calm me, you breathe peace to 
me. ... And I want to help you, now.” 

Margaret smiled sadly and drew Isabelle’s dark head to 
her and kissed it. | 

“Nobody can help, dear. ... It will come right! It 
must come right, I am sure.” — 

With the feelings that are beyond expression they held 
each other thus. Finally Margaret said in a low voice: — 

“Rob comes day after to-morrow; he will be at the Inn.” 

Isabelle rose from the couch with a sudden revulsion in 
her heart. After all, was this calm, this peace that she had 
admired in Margaret and longed to possess herself, this 
Something which she had achieved and which seemed to put 
her beyond and above ordinary women, nothing but the 
woman’s satisfaction in love, whose-lover is seeking her? 
She found herself almost despising Margaret unreasonably. 
Some man! That created the firmament of women’s heaven, 
with its sun and its moon and its stars. Remembered 
caresses and expected joys, — the woman’s bliss of yielding 
to her thosen master, — was that all! 

Margaret, following Isabelle with her eyes, seemed to com- 
prehend this sudden change in her heart. But she merely 
remarked : — 

“He cannot stay long, — only a couple of days, I believe.” 

“Tell me,’’ Isabelle demanded sharply, as if she had the 
right to know, must know, ‘‘ what are you going to do?” 

Margaret closed her eyes, and after a time of utter stillness 
she said in a voice beseechingly tender: — 


484 TOGETHER 


“Dear, perhaps I do not know, yet.” 

Her eyes were wet with unaccustomed tears. Stretching 
a hand to Isabelle and smiling again, she murmured: — 

“Whatever it will be, you must trust that it will be right 
for me and for him, — you must know that.” 

Isabelle pressed her hand gently: — 

“Forgive me.” 

“ And some day I will tell you.” 


CHAPTER LXII 


Mrs. SHorT peered through the dining-room window on the 
snow field, —a dazzling white under the March sun now well 
above the hills, — and watched the two black figures track- 
ing their way on snow-shoes towards the forest. Margaret’s 
slight figure swept ahead with a skill and assurance that the 
taller one did not show. ‘‘I guess,’’ mused the blacksmith’s 
wife, “that life on the Isthmus of Panama don’t fit a man 
much to distinguish himself on those things.’’ Nevertheless, 
the man tramped laboriously behind the woman until the 
two were halted by a fence, now visible through the sunken 
drift. They faced each other, and were evidently discussing 
mirthfully how the obstacle was to be met. The man stooped 
to untie the shoes, his pockets bulging with the day’s lunch- 
eon; but suddenly the woman backed away and began to 
climb the fence, a difficult feat. The man lumbered after 
her, catching one shoe in the top rail, finally freeing himself. 
Then the two black figures were lost over the dip of the hill. 
The smile still lingered on Mrs. Short’s face, — the smile 
that two beings, man and woman, still young and vital, 
must ‘always bring, as though saying, ‘There’s spring yet 
in the world, and years of life and hope to come!’ 


Behind the hill in the hollow Margaret was showing Falkner 
how to squat on his shoes and coast over the crust. At the 
bottom of the slide the brook was gurgling under a film of 
ice. ‘The upward slope. untouched by the sun, was glare ice, 
and they toiled. Beyond was the forest with its black tree 
trunks amid the clotted clumps of snowy underbrush. 
Falkner pushed on with awkward strength to reach Margaret, 
who lingered at the opening of the wood. How wonderful 
she was, he thought, so well, so full of life and fire, —O God! 
485 


486 TOGETHER 


all woman! And his heart beat hard, now that what he had 
seen these two years behind the curtain of his eyes was so 
near, —after all the weary months of heat and toil and 
desire! Only she was more, so much more —as the 
achieved beauty of the day is more than memory or an- 
ticipation. ... 

She smiled a welcome when he reached her, and pointed 
away to the misty hills. ‘The beauty of it!” she whispered 
passionately. ‘I adore these hills, I worship them. I have 
seen them morning and night all these months. -I know 
every color, every rock and curving line. It is like the face 
of a great austere God, this world up here, a God that may be 
seen.” 

“You have made me feel the hills in your letters.” 

“Now we see them together. ... Isn’t it wonderful to 
be here in it all, you and I, together?” 

He held his arms to her. 

‘Not yet,’ she whispered, and sped on into the still dark- 
ness between the fir branches. He followed. 

So on, on over the buried bushes, across the trickly, thaw- 
ing streams, through a thick swamp, close with alder and 
birch, on up the slope into woods more largely spaced, where 
great oaks towered among the fir and the spruce, and tall 
white birches glimmered in the dusk — all still and as yet 
dead. And on far up the mountain slope until beneath the 
Altar they came to a little circle, hedged round with thick 
young firs, where the deep snow was tracked with footprints 
of birds and foxes. Margaret leaned against the root of a 
fallen birch and breathed deeply. She had come like the 
wind, swift and elusive, darting through the forest under the 
snowy branches, as if—so felt the man with his leashed 
desire of her — the mere physical joy of motion and air and 
sun and still woods were enough, and love had been lost in the 
glory of the day!... 

‘““Here,”’ she murmured with trembling lips, “at last!’’ 

“At last !’”’ he echoed, her eyes close to his. And as they 
waited a moment before their lips met, the woman’s face 


\ 


TOGETHER 487 


softened and changed and pleaded with him wistfully, all the 
sorrow of waiting and hunger, of struggle and triumph in 
her eyes, and memory of joy and ecstasy that had been. 
.. . Her head fell to his shoulder, all will gone from her 
body, and she lay in his arms. 7 

“Love!”’ she murmured; “my soul’s desire, atlast!”? .. . 


They had their luncheon there, in the sunny circle among 
the firs, and spoke of their two years’ separation. 

“ And I am not going back!” Falkner cried joyously. 

“You have decided already ?”’ 

“My chief has resigned, you know, — and there is a piece 
of work up North here he wants me for. ... But that is 
not all the reason !”’ 

Her face blanched. They had begun their journey again, 
and were following the ridge of the mountain in the light of 
the westering sun. They walked slowly side by side so that 
they might talk. Margaret looked up questioningly. 

“You and I have always been honest — direct with each 
other,’ he said. 

She nodded gravely. 

“We have never slipped into things; we have looked 
ahead, looked it all in the face.”’ 

““Yes!’’ she assented proudly. 

“Then we will look this in the face together... . Ihave 
come back for one thing — for you!”’ 

As he drew her to him, she laid her hands on his breast and 
looked at him sadly. 

“The other was not enough!” 

“ Never ! — nothing could ever be enough but to have you 
always.” 

“ Dearest, that I might forever give you all that you ever 
desired! All!’’ she cried out of the tenderest depth of a 
woman’s heart, —the desire to give all, the best, to the man 
loved, the sacrificial triumph of woman, this offering of body 
and soul and life from the need to give, give, give! 

“T have come for one thing,’ he said hoarsely; “for you!” 


488 TOGETHER 


She drew herself back from his arms unconsciously and 
said: — 

“You must understand. ... Dearest, I love you as I 
never loved you before. Not even when you came to me and 
gave melife.... Ilongto give youall—foralways. But, 
dearest, for us it — cannot be.” 

“T do not understand,” Falkner protested. ‘ You think I 
am not free, — but I have come to tell you —”’ 

“‘No, — listen first! And you and I will be one in this as 
we always have been one since the beginning.... When we 
went away together those days, we climbed the heights — 
you gave me my soul — it was born in your arms. And I 
have lived since with that life. And it has grown, grown — 
I see so much farther now into the infinite that we reached 
out to then. And I see clearly what has been in the past — 
oh, so clearly!” 

“But why should that divide us now?” 

“Tisten!... Nowitis different. He, my husband, would 
be between us always, as he was not then. I took what I 
needed then — took it fiercely. I never thought of him. 
But now I see how all along from the beginning I with- 
drew my hand from him. Perhaps that was the reason he 
went so desperately to pieces at the end. I could not have 
made him a strong man. But, dearest, he died utterly 
alone, disgraced in hisown heart — alone! That is awful to 
think of!” 

“Tt was his nature,’ Falkner protested sternly. 

“Tt was his nature to be weak and small and petty. ... 
But don’t you see that. I deserted him — I took back my 
hand! And now I should let- you take back yours... . 
Yes, —I have changed, dearest. I have come to understand 
that the weak must be the burden of the strong — always!” 

Falkner’s lean face grew hard with the lines of hunger, — 
repressed but not buried, — the lines of inner strife. Ina 
dry voice he said: — 

“T thought that we had settled all that once, Margaret.”’ 

“One cannot settle such things so. ... It has come to 


TOGETHER 489 


me — the light — slowly, so slowly. And it is not all clear 
yet. But I see a larger segment of the circle than we could 
see two years ago.” . . 

Without more words they began to descend towards the 
village. The hills that compassed their view were rimmed 
with the green and saffron lights of the afterglow. Their 
summits were sharp edged as if drawn by a titanic hand 
against a sea of glowing color. But within the forests on the 
slope there was already the gloom of night. Slowly the 
words fell from his lips: — 

““T will never believe it! Why should a man and a woman 
who can together make the world brave and noble and full 
of joy be parted —by anything? A sacrifice that gives 
nothing to any one else!”’ 

That cry was the fruit of the man’s two years’ battle alone 
with his heart. To that point of hunger and desire he had 
come from the day when they parted, when they made their 
great refusal. ... 

Both remembered that evening, two years before, when they 
had sailed back to the land —to part. They remembered 
the Portuguese ship that was weighing anchor for a distant 
port. As they looked at it wistfully, he had said, ‘ And 
why not? And she had replied with shining eyes, ‘ Be- 
cause we love too much for that.”? Then he had accepted, 
—they had found the heights and on them they would 
remain, apart in the world of effort, always together in their 
own world which they had created. Then he had under- 
stood and gone away to his struggle. Now he could live no 
longer in that shadowy union: he had come back to possess 
his desire. 

With her it had been different, this separation.... How 
much more she loved now than then! Her love had entered 
into her these two years, deeper to the depths of her being, 
stronger as she was stronger in body, more vital. It had 
given her strength even for the great denial to him, — and 
this she realized miserably; their love had given her 
strength, had unfolded her soul to herself until she had come 


490 TOGETHER 


to large new spheres of feeling, and could see dimly others 
beyond. While with him it had burned away all else but 
one human, personal want. He thought to go back now to 
their island in the sea, — as if one could ever go back in this 
life, even to the fairest point of the past! ... 

She laid a caressing hand on his arm. 

‘Don’t you see, dearest, that we could never come out 
again on the heights where we were ?”’ 

From the sombre mood of his defeat, he said bitterly :— 

“So it was all wrong, — a mistake, a delusion!”’. 

“Never !”’ she flashed. ‘‘ Never! Not for one moment since 
we parted would I give up what has been between us... . 
You do not understand, dearest! ... Life began for me 
there. If it had not been for that, this could not be now. 
But one journeys on from knowledge to knowledge.” 

“Then why not other heights — together ?”’ 

And she whispered back very low: — 

“Because we should kill it! All of it... now that I see 
it would be base. We have risen above that glory, — yes, 
both of us! We have risen above it, divine as it was. It 
would be no longer divine, my dearest. I should be but a 
woman’s body in your arms, my lover. ... Now we shall 
rise always, always, together — each in the other!” _ 

The lights of the village shone just below them. A sleigh 
went tinkling loudly along the road, with the voices of talk- 
ing people in the dark night. Margaret stopped before they 
reached the road, and turning to him put her arms about 
his neck and drew him to her. 

“Don’t you know that I shall be yours always? Ah, 
dearest, dearest !”’ 

In the passionate tenderness of her kiss he felt the ful- 
ness of victory and defeat. She was his, but never to be 
his. He kissed her burning eyes. 


CHAPTER LXIII 


Supper at the Shorts’ was the pleasantest time of the 
day. The small, plain room, warm and light and homely, 
the old blacksmith’s contented face as he sat at the head 
of his table and served the food, glancing now and then 
with a meaning look at his wife, mutely talking with her, 
and the two friends in light summer dresses chatting of the 


- day, — it was all so remote from the bustle of life, so simply 


~ 


peaceful that to Isabelle supper at the Shorts’ was the sym- 
bol of Grosvenor life as much as Renault’s hospital. It 
was the hour when the blacksmith’s ripest wisdom and best 
humor came to the surface; when, having pounded existence 
and lassitude out of iron and wood in the little shop down 
the street, he relaxed the muscles of his tired body and 
looked over to his wife and found the world good. 

“Theirs is the figure of perfect marriage,’’ Margaret had 
sail; “interlocked activity, withemotionalsatisfaction. Mrs. 
Short’s climax of the day is her hot supper laid before her 
lord. . . . Do you see how they talk without words across 
the table? They know what the other is thinking always. 
So the Shorts have found what so many millions miss, — 
a real marriage!” 

To-night when Falkner came back with Margaret for 
supper, this note of perfect domesticity was at its best. 
Mr. Short had gone to the cellar for a bottle of cider wine 
in honor of the guest from Panama, and his wife rustled 
in black silk. She had made a marvellous cake that sat 
proudly on the sideboard, looking down on the feast. The 
blacksmith carved the hot meat, and in his gentle voice 
talked to the stranger. 

“You must have found it hard work when the snow got 
soft on the hills. As I felt the sun coming down warm, ! 

491 


492 TOGETHER 


said to myself, ‘Those shoes will seem as big as cart-wheels 
to him.’ ... You were up by Belton’s? There’s big 
timber in there still, back on the mountain, where they 
found it too hard to get out. You come across a great log 
now and then that looks like a fallen giant. ... But I 
remember on my father’s farm, twenty miles from here in 
the back country, when I was a boy”? — 

He held the carving-knife suspended above the steak, 
lost in the vista of years. These anecdotal attacks worried 
his wife, who feared for her hot food; but the others en- 
couraged him. 

— “there were trees lying on the ground in the pasture 
rotting, that must have been five feet through at the butt 
end. I used to sit atop of them and think how big they 
would have been standing up with their tops waving... . 
Yes, wood was cheap in those days.” ... 

Isabelle, as she watched Margaret and Falkner, was puz- 
zled. Margaret in her rose-colored tea-gown was like a 
glowing coal, but Falkner seemed glum and listless. “Tired, 
poor man!” Mrs. Short thought, and the blacksmith had 
full scope for his. memories. But gradually Falkner be- 
came interested and asked questions. As a boy he had 
lived in the country, and in the atmosphere of the Shorts 
the warm memories of those days revived, and he talked 
of his own country up in the “big timber” of Michigan. 
Margaret, resting her head on her hands, watched his eager 
eyes. She knew, so well, what was in his mind below his 
memories. ‘These good people have all this! these simple 
people, just the plain, elementary, ordinary things of life, — 
a peaceful shelter, warmth, comfort, happiness. And wes 
she and I, might have this and so much more, — a thousand 
interests and ecstasies, but we who are still young must live 
on in cheerless separation, missing all this — and for what?’ 

She read it in his eyes. She knew the man-nature, how 
it develops when middle life comes, — the desire for home, 
for the settled and ordered spot, the accustomed shelter. 
When the zest of the wandering days no longer thrills, the 


TOGETHER 493 


adventurous and experimenting impulse is spent, that is 
what man, even a passionate lover, craves to find in a 
woman, — peace and the ordered life. And she could give 
it to this man, who had never had it, — companionship and 
comradeship as well, and make an inner spot of peace 
where the man might withdraw from the fighting world. Oh, 
she knew how to fit his life like a spirit! ... 

When Falkner rose to leave, Margaret slipped on a long 
coat, saying : — 

“T will show you the way to the Inn; you would never 
find it alone!”’ 

As she took his arm outside, he asked dully : — 

“Which way now?” 

“This is our way first,’”? and Margaret turned up the road 
away from the village, past the doctor’s house. They walked 
in silence. When she pointed out Renault’s hospital, 
Falkner looked at it indifferently. ‘Queer sort of place 
for a hospital. What kind of a man is he?” 

“A queer sort of man,” Margaret replied. 

Beyond the hospital the road mounted the hillside, pass- 
ing through dark woods. Beneath their feet the frozen 
snow crunched icily. 

“Good people that blacksmith and his wife,’ Falkner 
remarked. “That was the kind of thing I dreamed it would 
be, — a place, a spot, of our own, no matter how plain and 
small, and some one to look across the table as that gray- 
haired woman looks at the old fellow, as if she knew him to 
the roots. . . . I hope it will be some time before they get 
the apartment hotel in Grosvenor! ... A man has his 
Work,’ he mused. 

“Yes, the man has his work.” 

“And a woman her children.” 

“And the woman her children.” 

“So that is what life comes to in the middle distance, — 
the man has his work and the woman her children... . 
But one doesn’t marry for that! There is something else.” 

Her clasp tightened on his arm, and he turned quickly 


494 TOGETHER 


-and taking the fingers in his hand separated them one by 
one between his. In the starlight he could see the fine 
line of her face from brow to pointed chin, and he could hear 
her breathing. 

“This, this!’ he muttered fiercely. ‘ Your touch, so; 
your look, so— your voice in my ear — what makes it 
magic for me? Why not another? Any other — why 
this? To go to the heart of one! Yours — which will never 
be mine.” 

The sweep of dominating desire, the male sense of mastery 
and will to possess, surged up again in the man, tempting him 
to break the barriers she had erected between them, to take 
her beyond her scruples, and carry her with him, as the 
strong man of all time has carried away the woman whom he 
would have for mate. 

She held her face upwards for his kiss, and as she prenibled 
once more in the arms of the man she had consented to, 
there was answered in her the mystery he had propounded, 
— ‘Because of the J within me that he loves and respects, 
because of that J which is mine and no other’s, not even 
his, — therefore he loves me of all the world, —I am his 
BOUL Avia al ts 

It was all snowy upland near the crest of the hill. They 
leaned against a rock, close together, and listened to the 
stillness around them, his arm beneath her cloak drawing 
her closer, closer to him, away from herself. In the forget- 
fulness of joy she seemed mounting, floating, high up 
above all, the man’s desire bearing her on wings away from 
the earth with its failure and sorrow, up to the freedom 
she had thirsted for, up to fulfilment... . : 

Now his eyes, once more victorious, looked close into hers, 
and something within her spoke, — low and sweet and far 
away. 

a | love you, dearest! I will be yours, as you will have 
me, — as we were those other days, and more. Much more! 
I will be your slave, your mistress, —to do with as you 
wish, to take and leave. ... There can be no marriage, 


TOGETHER 495 


none. Will you have me? Will you take me like that? 


To be your thing? Will you... and throw me away 
when I am used and finished for you?... I will give 
you all! Now! ... And when the time comes that must 


come, I will go out.” - 

Then, at last, the man saw! She would give all, even 
her own soul, if he would take it. But first, there was 
something he must kill, —there in her body within his 
close embrace, with her breath on his face, — something 
she offered him as a last gift to kill. ... The body was 
but a symbol, a piece of clothing, arag. . . . So he under- 
stood, and after a long time his arms loosened about 
her. 

“T see,” he whispered, and as he kissed her lips, ‘‘ Never 
that!” 

The summit of the mountain loomed above them, — 
the Altar. Margaret as they turned towards the village 
stretched her arms upwards to the Altar, — there where she 
had lain as it were naked for the sacrifice before the man 
she loved. “Come!” he said gently. 

They had kissed for the last time. 


As they approached the Inn at the farther end of the 
village, Falkner was saying in reply to her question :— 

“Yes, after I have seen something of Mildred, I shall go 
to Washington to join the chief. He will want me to live 
up in the country at the works. I shall like that... . 
The dam will take three years at least, I suppose. It must 
be like the work of the ancient Egyptians, for all time and 
colossal. I wish the work might last out my day!”’ 

The woman’s heart tightened. Already he had swung, 
as she willed, to the one steadfast star in his firmament, — 
work, accomplishment, — accepting the destiny she had 
willed, to struggle upwards apart from her to that high altar 
where they both had stood this night. . .. 

When Margaret entered the house, Isabelle’s light was 
still burning and her doorwasopen. She paused as she passed 


496 TOGETHER 


to her room, her coat flung back revealing the soft rose color 
beneath, and in her white face her eyes shone softly. 

“Rob leaves to-morrow morning by the early train,” she 
remarked. 

“So soon!” 

“Yes, —for the West.’’ 

And then Isabelle knew, as Margaret had promised. 


CHAPTER LXIV 


Dr. RENAULT’S private office was a large, square room 
with a north window that gave a broad view of the pointed 
Albany mountains. Along the walls were rows of unpainted 
wooden shelves on which were stacked books and pamphlets. 
One small piece of bronze on the shelf above the fireplace — 
a copy of the seated Mercury in the Naples museum — was the 
sole ornament in the room. A fire was dying on the hearth 
this gray March afternoon, and flashes of light from a break- 
ing log revealed the faces of Renault and Isabelle, standing 
on opposite sides of his work table. They had stood like 
this a long time while the gray day came to an end outside 
and the trees lashed by the north wind bent and groaned. 
Isabelle was passing the office, after dinner, on some errand, 
and the doctor had called her. Accident had led to this 
long talk, the longest and the deepest she had had with 
Renault. One thing had touched another until she had 
bared to him her heart, had laid before his searching gaze 
the story of her restless, futile life. And the words that he 
had spoken had dropped like hot metal upon her wounds 
and burned until her hands trembled as they leaned upon 
his: deskkets i... 

“The discipline of life!’? he had said. The phrase was 
hateful to her. It stirred within her all the antagonism 
of her generation to the creed of her people, to the Puritan 
ideal, cold, narrow, repressive. And yet Renault was far 
from being a Puritan. But he, too, believed in the “ discipline 
of life.’ And again when she had confessed her ambitions 
for “a broad life,” “for experience,” he had said: “ Ego- 
tism is the pestilence of our day, — the sort of base intellec- 
tual egotism that seeks to taste for the sake of tasting. 
Kgotism is rampant. And worst of all it has corrupted 

2% 497 


498 TOGETHER 


the women, in whom should lie nature’s great conservative 
element. So our body social is rotten with intellectual 
egotism. Yes, I mean just what you have prided yourself 
on, — Culture, Education, Individuality, Cleverness, — 
‘leading your own lives,’ Refinement, Experience, Develop- 
ment, call it what you will, — it is the same, the inturning 
of the spirit to cherish self. Not one of all you women has 
a tenth of the experience my mother had, who, after bringing 
up her family of eight, at fifty-seven went to the town 
school to learn Latin, because before she had not had the 
time.” .. . To some defence of her ideal by Isabelle, he 
retorted with fine scorn:— _ 

“Oh, I know the pretty impression our American women 
make in the eyes of visiting foreigners, —so ‘clever,’ so 
‘fascinating,’ so ‘original,’ so ‘independent,’ and such 
‘charm’! Those are the words, aren’t they? While their 
dull husbands are ‘money-getters.’ They at least are 
doers, not talkers! ... 

“Do you know what you are, women like you, who have 
money and freedom to ‘live your own lives’? You are 
sexless; you haven’t nature’s great apology for the animal, 
— desire. Such women sin, when they sin, with their 
minds. Great God! I had rather those broad-hipped Italian 
peasant women of Calabria, with solid red-brown flesh, bred 
bastards for the country than have these thin, anemic, 
neryous, sexless creatures, with their ‘souls’ and their 
‘charm,’ marry and become mothers! What have you 
done to the race? The race of blond giants from the forests 
of the north? Watch the avenue in New York!” 

Again, — “So what have you made of marriage, ‘leading 
your own lives’? You make marriage a sort of intelligent 
and intellectual prostitution — and you develop divorce. 
The best among you —those who will not marry unless 
the man can arouse their ‘best selves’ —will not bear 
children even then. And you think you have the right to 


choose again when your so-called souls have played you 


false the first time. ... And man, what of him? You 


TOGETHER 499 


leave him to his two gross temptations, — Power and Lust. 
Man is given you to protect, and you drive him into the 
market-place, where he fights for your ease, and then relaxes 
in the refined sensualities you offer him as the reward for 
his toil. With the fall of man into the beast’s trough must 
come the degradation of women. They cannot travel 
apart; they must pull together. What have yow done for 
your husband?” He turned sharply on Isabelle. ‘ Where 
is he now? where has he been all these years? What is 
he doing this hour? Have you nursed his spirit, sharpened 
his sword? ... I am not speaking of the dumb ones 
far down in the mass, nor of the humdrum philistines that 
still make homes, have traces of the nest-instinct left; but of 
you, you, — the developed intelligences who flatter yourselves 
that you lead because you are free to do as you like. By 
your minds you are betrayed!” 

Before the blast of his scorching words Isabelle saw her 
ambitions shrivel into petty nothings, —all the desires 
from her first married days to find a suitable expression 
of her individuality, her wish to escape Torso, her contempt 
for St. Louis, her admiration for Cornelia Woodyard, her 
seeking for “interesting”? people and a cultivated and 
charming background for herself, and last of all her dis- 
satisfaction in her marriage because it failed to evoke in 
her the passion she desired. It was a petty story, she felt, 
— ashamed before Renault’s irony. 

He knew her life, more than she had told him, much more. 
He knew her. He read below the surface and had known her 
from the first hour they had met. It was all true, — she 
had wanted many things that now she saw were futile. 
She had accepted her marriage as failure — almost with 
relief, as an excuse for her restlessness. Yes, she had made 
mistakes; what was worse, was a mistake herself! Crushed 
with this sense of futility, of failure, she cried: — 

“But we are caught in the stream when we are young 
and eager. The world seems so big and rich if you but 
reach out your hand to take.” 


500 TOGETHER 


“And from its feast you took — what?” 
She was silent, self-convicted; for she had taken chaff! 
Nevertheless, it was not dead within her — the self. 
It cried out under Renault’s pitiless scorn for satisfaction, 
for life. The rebellious surge of desire still suffocated her 
at times. There was beauty, the loveliness of the earth, 
the magic wonder of music and art, — all the clamor of 
emotion for an expression of self. And love? Ah, that 
was dead for her. But the life within, the self, still hun- 
gered for possession at times more fiercely than ever. Why 
should it be killed at her age? Why were they not good, 
these hungry desires, this fierce self that beat in her blood 
for recognition? The conquering, achieving seLF! That 
was the spirit of her race, to see and take that which was 
good in their eyes, to feed the sELF with all that the world 
contained of emotions, ideas, experience; to be big, and 
strong, and rich, — to have Power! That was what life had 
meant for her ancestors ever since the blond race emerged 
from their forests to conquer. All else was death to the 
self, was merely sentimental deception, a playing at resigna- 
ton) Vs 

As if he traced her fast thoughts, Renault said :— 

“A house divided against itself — ”’ 

“But even if I have failed — ” 

“Failed because you did not look deep enough within!” 

Renault’s voice insensibly softened from his tone of harsh 
invective as he added: — 

“And now you know what I meant when I said that 
a neurasthenic world needed a new religion!” 

So he had remembered her, — knew her all the time! 

“But you can’t get it because you need it —” 

“Yes, because you feel the need! ... Not the old reli- 
gion of abnegation, the impossible myths that come to us 
out of the pessimistic East, created for a relief, a soporific, 
a means of evasion, — I do not mean that as religion. But 
another faith, which abides in each one of us, if we look for it. 
Werise with it in the morning. It isa faith in life apart from’ 

t 


TOGETHER 501 


our own personal fate. . . . Because we live on the surface, 
we despair, we get sick. Look below into the sustaining 
depths beyond desire, beyond self, to the depths, — and 
you will find it. It will uplift you. ... When you wake 
in the morning, there will come to you some mysterious power 
that was not there before, some belief, some hope, some faith. 
Graspit! ... When the clouds lift, the physical clouds and 
the mental clouds, then appears the Vision and the knowl- 
edge. They are the truth from the depths within, — the 
voice of the spirit that lives always. And by that voice 
man himself lives or dies, as he wills, — by the voice ot the 
spirit within.” 

So as the drear day of the dying winter drew to a close, 
as the ashes powdered on the hearth and the face of Renault 
became obscure in the twilight, the dim outlines of a great 
meaning rose before her, reconciling all. ... The Vision 
that abides within apart from the teasing phantasmagoria 
of sense, the Vision that comes, now dim, now vivid, as the 
flash of white light in the storm, the Vision towards which 
mankind blindly reaches, the Vision by which he may learn 
to live and endure all! 

And this Vision was all that really mattered, — to see it, 
to follow where it pointed the way! 

. “The waste in life, the wrong steps, the futile years !”’ 
she murmured. 

“Rather the cost, the infinite cost of human souls — and 
their infinite value once born,’ Renault corrected. “Do 
not distress yourself about what to do, the claims of this or 
that. The thing to do will always be clear, once you trust 
yourself, seek wholly the Vision. And as for beauty and 
satisfaction and significance, —it is infinite in every mo- 
ment of every life — when the eyes are once open to see!”’ 

There was the sound of footsteps outside, and Isabelle 
moved to the door. 

“So,” Renault concluded, putting his hands on her shoul- 
ders,“ it is not the End but the Beginning. And always so, 
—a mysterious journey, this life, with countless beginnings. 


HOO pls TOGETHER 


We go out into the night. But the light comes — 
when we forget to see ourselves.”’ 

The wind raged in the trees outside, sweeping across the 
earth, tearing the forest, cleansing and breaking its repose, 
preparing for the renewal to come. Like a mighty voice 
it shouted to man; like the whirlwind it shook his earth. 

For the first time since Vickers lay dead in the dawn 
of the June morning Isabelle could bear to look at the past, 
—to accept it calmly as part of herself out of which she 
had lived, in recognition of that beginning within. 


CHAPTER LXY 


“They seem to be in such a pother, out in the world,” 
Isabelle remarked to Margaret, as she turned over the leaves 
of her husband’s letter. ‘The President is calling names, 
and a lot of good people are calling names back. And 
neither side seems to like being called names. John doesn’t 
like it, and he calls names. And they sulk and won’t play 
marbles. It all sounds like childish squabbling.” 

Margaret, who was unusually absent-minded this evening, 
sighed : — . 

“So many desires of men, always struggling at cross- 
purposes! I haven’t read the papers for months! They 
don’t seem real up here, somehow. What’s happening?” 

“T haven’t opened my papers, either. Look there!” 
isabelle pointed to a pile of unwrapped newspapers in the 
corner. “ But I must go through them and see what John 
is grumbling about. It isn’t like John to grumble at any- 
thing.” Then she read from her husband’s letter: “The 
President in his besotted vanity and colossal ignorance has 
succeeded in creating trouble that twenty Presidents won’t 
be able to settle. The evils which he may have corrected 
are nothing to those he has brought upon innocent people. 

So far as our road is concerned, this prejudiced and 
partisan investigation, instigated by the newspapers and 
notoriety seekers, will do no great harm. ... I suppose 
you have seen the garbled press account of my cross-exami- 
nation, — don’t let it disturb you.” ... 

Isabelle looked up. 

“T wonder what he means by that! ‘My cross-examina- 
tion’? It must be something rather out of the ordinary 
to stir John to such expression, —‘Besotted vanity and 
colossal ignorance.’ Whew!” 

503 


504 TOGETHER 


After Margaret left, Isabelle began abstractedly to strip 
the wrappers from the newspapers, glancing at the thickest 
headlines : — 


BANK FAILURE — SUICIDE OF BANK PRESIDENT — SEN- 
SATIONAL DIVORCE, etc. 


Here it was at last: — 


Tur ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC ON THE GRILL!! INVESTIGA- 
TION OF THE GREAT RAILROAD’S COAL BUSINESS 


Isabelle scanned the newspaper column indifferently. 
As Margaret had said, the squabbles of the great, conglomer- 
ate, writhing business world seemed remote indeed. They had 
never been actual to her, though she was the daughter of a 
merchant. In the Colonel’s house, asin most American homes 
of the well-to-do, the newspaper was regarded as a necessary 
evil, largely composed of lies and garbled rumors. It was 
taken for granted that almost everything to be seen in print 
was vitiated by sensational falsehood, and so far as “busi- 
ness’’ — mystic word! — was concerned, all ‘“news’’ was 
pure fabrication. This sceptical attitude had been inten- 
sified by John, who regarded any criticism of the actions of 
capital as dictated by envy, as “unpatriotic,” aimed at the 
efforts of the most energetic and respectable element in the 
community; moreover, “socialistic,’’ that is, subversive of 
the established order, etc. According to John the ablest 
men would always “get on top,’’ no matter what laws were 
made. And getting on top meant that they would do what 
they wished with their own, 7.e. capital. Thus without 
thinking about it Isabelle had always assumed that men - 
in general were envious of their betters. Sometimes, to 
be sure, she had suspected that this simple theory might 
be incomplete, that her husband and his friends might 
be “narrow.’’ Some people whose opinion she respected 
even approved of the President’s policy in seeking to curb 
the activities of capital. But she had slight interest in 


TOGETHER 505 


the vexed question, and skipped all references to indus- 
trial turmoil in her reading. 

So to-night her eyes slipped carelessly down the column, 
which was not intelligible without previous accounts, and 
she continued to rip the wrappers from newspapers, letting 
the stiff parcels of paper drop to the floor. She was think- 
ing of what Renault had said, bits of his phrases con- 
stantly floating through her mind. If he had only been 
more precise! She wanted to know what to do, — here, now. 
He had said: “ Wait! It will all be clear. It makes little differ- 
ence what it is. You will find the path.’”’ With her eager 
temperament that was all baffling. Margaret had found 
her path, — had seen her Vision, and it had brought to her 
peace. Her restless, bitter nature had been wonderfully 
changed into something exquisitely calm and poised, so 
that her very presence, silent in the room, could be felt. . . . 

Isabelle’s eyes caught the headline in the paper she was 
opening : — 


OFFICIALS OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC BEFORE THE 
FEDERAL GRAND JURY 


JOHN §. LANE, THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE Roap, 
INDICTED 


Isabelle’s mind suddenly woke to the present, and she 
began to read breathlessly: “As a result of the recent 
investigations by the Interstate Commerce Commission of 
the relation between the Atlantic and Pacific and certain 
coal properties, officials of that system have been examined 
by a special Grand Jury, and it is rumored,” etc. Isabelle 
glanced at the date of the paper. It was a month old! 
Even now, perhaps, her husband was on trial or had already 
been tried for illegal acts in the conduct of his business, 
and she knew nothing about it! Another paper had the 
item: “This time the district attorney under direction 
from Washington will not be content to convict a few rate 
clerks or other underlings. The indictment found against 
one of the vice-presidents of this great corporation that has 


506 TOGETHER 


so successfully and impudently defied the law will create 
a profound impression upon the whole country. It is a 
warning to the corporation criminals that the President 
and his advisers arenot to be frightened by calamity-howlers, 
and will steadfastly pursue their policy of going higher up 
in their effort to bring the real offenders before the courts. 
The coming trial befare federal Judge Barstow will be he 
lowed with intense interest,” etc., ete. 

Isabelle rapidly uhehwerst che remaining newspapers, 
arranging them in the order of dates, and then glanced through 
every column in search of news about the trial, even to 
the editorial comments on the action of the Grand Jury. 
The earlier papers that had the account of the investi- 
gation by the Commission had been destroyed unread, but she 
inferred from what she saw that the affair rose from the 
complaint of independent mine-owners in Missouri and 
Indiana that they were discriminated against by the railroad. 
The federal authorities were trying to establish the fact of 
conspiracy on the part of the Atlantic and Pacific to control 
the coal business along its lines. There were hints of an 
“inside ring,’’ whose operations tended to defraud both 
stockholders and public... . 

As she read the wordy columns of report and suspicion, 
there suddenly shot into Isabelle’s mind a memory of a 
Sunday afternoon in Torso when she and John had ridden 
by Mr. Freke’s mines and John had said in reply to her 
question, “Mr. Freke and I do business together.” Mr. 
Freke was the president of the Pleasant Valley Coal Com- 
pany, — a name that occurred often in the newspaper report, 
the name which had been spread across the black sheds she 
had seen that Sunday afternoon. Now she remembered, 
also, that she had had to sign certain papers for transfer 
of stock when John had sold something to put the money — 
into coal. And last of all she remembered at the very begin- 
ning of her life in Torso the face of that manin her husband’s 
office and how he had begged for cars, and his cry, “My 
God! I shall go bankrupt!”’ Out of it all — the newspaper 


TOGETHER 507 


paragraphs, the legal terms, the editorial innuendoes, the 
memories — there was shaped something like a coherent 
picture of what this dispute really meant, and her husband’s 
concern in it. 

It was now midnight. Isabelle’s mind was stung to keen 
apprehension. She did not know whether John was 
guilty of what the government was seeking to prove him 
guilty. She could not judge whether the government 
was justified in bringing suit against the railroad and its 
officials. There was doubtless the other side, John’s side. 
Perhaps it was a technical crime, a formal slip, as she had 
been told it was in other cases where the government had 
prosecuted railroads. That would come out clearly at 
the trial, of course. But the fact that stared her in the face 
was that her husband was to be tried — perhaps was on 
trial this very day — and she did not even know it! She 
reached for the papers again and searched for the date of 
the trial of the coal cases in the federal court. It was to 
open the nineteenth of March —it was now the twenty- 
second! And the last paper to reach her was the issue of 
the eighteenth. The trial had already begun. 

Isabelle paced the narrow breadth of her chamber. Her 
husband was on trial, and he had not written her. His 
last letters, which she had destroyed, had betrayed signs 
of irritation, disturbance. ... MRenault’s charge, ‘The 
curse of our day is egotism,’ rang in her ears. She had 
been so much concerned over her own peace of mind, 
her own soul, that she had had no room for any perception — 
even for the man with whom she had lived side by side for 
ten years! Love or not, satisfaction or not in marriage, 
it must mean something to live for ten years of life with 
another human being, eat bread with him, sleep under the 
same roof with him, bear a child to him. ... And there 
in her silent room Isabelle began to see that there was some- 
thing in marriage other than emotional satisfaction, other 
than conventional cohabitation. “Men are given to you 
women to protect —the best in them!” “You live off 


508 TOGETHER 


their strength,— what do you give them? Sensuality or 
spirit?’? Her husband was a stranger; she had given him 
nothing but one child. 

Isabelle opened her trunks and began to pack. There 
was a train south from White River at eight-thirty, which 
connected with the New York express. Molly could follow 


later with the governess. . .. She flung the things loosely 
into the trunks, her mind filled with but one idea. She 
must get to St. Louis as soon as possible. ‘John — my 


husband — is being tried out there for dishonest.conduct 
in his business, and we are so far apart that he doesn’t 
even mention it in his letters!’ 

At last, the packing over, she crouched by the embers . 
and tried to warm her numb hands. This burst of decided 
will which had made her swiftly prepare for the journey 
gave out for the moment. ... What should she do out 
there, after all? She would merely be in the way and 
annoy John. And with a strength that startled her came 
the answer, ‘After all, we are man and wife; he is my 
husband, and he is in trouble!’ 

It would not be possible to see Renault before she left. 
Well, he had spoken his message to her, having chosen his 
own time. And already his prophecy was coming about. 
The thing to do was plain. The Vision was there, and the 
voice had spoken out of the depths. She was extraordi- 
narily calm, as if raised above doubt, the confusing calls of 
personal consideration. There might be disgrace to come 
for her husband. ‘There was the undoubted miserable failure 
of her marriage, —the strong possibility of her husband’s 
impassive coldness at her futile flight to his side, at this 
hour. But there was no Fear! ... And serenely she 
dropped into sleep. 


CHAPTER LXVI 


MARGARET and the children drove down to White River 
with her the next morning. Just as Margaret had previously 
opposed her restless desire to leave Grosvenor, with gentle 
suggestions and quiet persuasion, so this time she accepted 
her going as inevitable. 

“But you may come back; I wish it might be!” was all 
she said, not very hopefully. | 

Isabelle shook her head. She made no plans, but she 
felt that no matter what the outcome of the trial might be 
it was hardly probable that her path would lead back to this 
retreat. As she got into the sleigh she looked up the hillside 
to the hospital, its many windows glistening in the rising 
* sun, its severe outlines sharp against the snowy field, and 
her eyes roved on to the dusky firs in the valley, up to the 
purple hilltop of the Altar, on to the distant peaks rising 
behind, with crests already bare. Her eyes were misty as 
she drove through the familiar village street, past the black- 
smith’s shop, where Sol Short waved a second good-by 
with a glowing bar of steel caught from the forge, on towards 
the Pass and the descent, —it was a haven of peace, this 
hillside village! Within that circle of snowy hills, in the 
silent beauty of the Northern winter, she had lived more, 
lived deeper, than anywhere else in the world. But she 
should not come back, — there would be no place for that. 
Grosvenor had given its benediction, — the hills and the 
woods, the snowy expanses and frozen brooks, the sunsets 
and starlit firmament, — the blacksmith’s simple content 
and Renault’s beacon lights, Margaret’s peace, — all had 
done their work in her. As the lumbering sleigh dragged 
over the Pass, she gazed back to fix its image in her mind 
forever. The fresh March wind blew in her face, chill but 

509 


510 TOGETHER 


full of distant promise, as if in its sweep from the north it 
had heard the tidings of spring, the stirrings deep below 
snow and frost. And the sky shimmered cloudless from 
horizon to horizon, a soft blue... . 

The agitations before and the struggle to come were inter- 
spaced by this lofty place of Peace — wherein she had found 
herself ! 


The frost-covered train from the north drew up at the 
platform in a cloud of steam. The fireman, a. lad of 
eighteen, with a curl waving from under his cap, was leaning 
far out of the cab, smoking a cigarette and looking up at 
the snowy mountains just visibie from White River. He 
was careless, — alive, and content this fine morning, — 
his grimy arms bare on the sill of the cab window, the broad 
earth and its hills spread before him. As the engine shot 
past, he looked down at Isabelle, curiously, and then up to 
the?mountains again, as if his life were complete enough. 
A careless figure of the human routine of the world, endlessly 
moving, changing, energizing, functioning in its destined 
orbit! And all lives were tied together in the fine mesh of 
circumstance, — one destiny running into another as the steel 
band of railroad ran on and on into distant places, just as 
the lad in the engine cab was somehow concerned with the 
whole human system that ended, perchance, in the court- 
room at St. Louis... . 

Isabelle took Margaret in her arms and holding her close, 
as if she would seize her very spirit, kissed her. 

“Tell the doctor,’’ she said, “that I am beginning to under- 
stand — a little.” 


m~ 


nf 








CHAPTER LXVII 


Wuat is marriage? At least in these United States where 
men once dreamed they would create a new society of ideal 
form based on that poetic illusion, ‘“‘ All men’’ — presumably 
women, too! — ‘“‘are born free and equal !”’ 

Yes, what has marriage been, — first among the pioneers 
pushing their way to new land through the forest, their 
women at their sides, or in the ox-cart behind them with 
the implements of conquest, — pushing out together into 
the wide wilderness, there to fight side by side, to tame 
Nature and win from her a small circle of economic order 
for their support? Together these two cut the trees, build 
the cabin, clear the land and sow it, thus making shelter 
and food. And then the Woman draws apart to bring her 
increment, the children, to fight with them, to follow in their 
steps. In that warfare against stubborn Nature and Chaos,, 
against the Brute, against the EKnemy in whatever form, 
the Man and the Woman are free and equal, — they stand 
together and win or lose together, live or die in the life-long 
battle. And the end? If they triumph in this primitive 
struggle for existence, they have won a few acres of cleared 
land for the harvest, a habitation, and food, and children 
who will take up from their hands the warfare for life, to 
win further concessions from Nature, a wider circle of order 
from chaos. This is the marriage type of the pioneer, — 
a& primitive, body-wracking struggle of two against all, a 
perfect type, elemental but whole, — and this remains the 
large pattern of marriage to-day wherever sound. Two 
bodies, two souls are united for the life struggle to wring 
order out of chaos, — physical and spiritual. 

Generations are born and die. The circles grow wider, 

2u 513 . 


514 TOGETHER 


more diversified, overlap, intersect. But the type remains 
of that primitive wilderness struggle of the family. Then 
comes to this breeding society the Crisis. There came 
to us the great War, — the conflict of ideals. Now Man 
leaves behind in the home the Woman and her children, 
and goes forth alone to fight for the unseen, — the Idea 
that is in him, that is stronger than woman or child, greater 
than life itself. Giving over the selfish struggle with the 
Brute, he battles against articulate voices. And the Woman 
is left to keep warm the forsaken nest, to nurse the brood 
there, to wait and want, perchance to follow after her man to 
the battle-field and pick out her dead and bear it back to 
burial. She, too, has her part in the struggle; not merely 
the patient, economic part, but the cherishing and the shap- 
ing of man’s impulse, — the stuff of his soul that sends him 
into the battle-field. Alone she cannot fight; her Man is 
her weapon. He makes to prevail those Ideals which she 
has given him with her embraces. ‘This also is the perfect 
type of Marriage, — comradeship, togethership, — and yet 
larger than before because the two share sacrifice and sorrow 
and truth, — things of the spirit. Together they wage War 
for others. 

And there follows a third condition of Marriage. The 
wilderness reduced, society organized, wars fought, there is 
the time of peace. Now Man, free to choose his task, goes 
down into the market-place to sell his force, and here he 
fights with new weapons a harder fight; while his Woman 
waits behind the firing line to care for him, — to equip him 
and to hoard his pelf. On the strength and wisdom of her 
commissariatship the fate of this battle in good part depends. 
Of such a nature was Colonel Price’s marriage. ‘‘ He made 
the money, I saved it,’”’ Harmony Price proudly repeated in 
the after-time. ‘ We lived our lives together, your mother 
and I,” her husband said to their daughter. It was his 
force that won the dollars, made the economic position, 
and her thrift and willingness to forego present ease that 
created future plenty. Living thus together for an eco- 


TOGETHER 515 


nomic end, saving the surplus of their energies, they were 
prosperous — and they were happy. The generation of 
money-earners after the War, when the country already 
largely reclaimed began to bear fruit abundantly, were 
happy, if in no greatly idealistic manner, yet peacefully, 
contentedly happy, and usefully preparing the way for the 
upward step of humanity to a little nearer realization of 
that poetic illusion, — the brotherhood of man. 

In all these three stages of the marriage state, the union of 
Man and Woman is based on effort in common, together; 
not on sentiment, not on emotion, not on passion, not on 
individual gratification of sense or soul. The two are part- 
ners in living, and the fruit of their bodies is but another 
proof of partnership. .. . 

And now emerges another economic condition, the inexor- 
able successor of the previous one, and another kind of Mar- 
riage. Society is complexly organized, minutely interrelated; 
great power here and great weakness there, vast accumula- 
tions of surplus energies, hoarded goods, many possessions, — 
oh, a long gamut up and down the human scale! And the 
CHANCE, the great gamble, always dangles before Man’s eyes; 
not the hope of a hard-won existence for woman and chil- 
dren, not a few acres of cleared wilderness, but a dream of 
the Aladdin lamp of human desires, — excitements, emo- 
tions, ecstasies, — all the world of the mind and the body. 
So Woman, no longer the Pioneer, no longer the defender of 
the house, no longer the economist, blossoms — as what? 
The Spender! She is the fine flower of the modern game, 
of the barbaric gamble. At last she is Queen and will rule. 
The Man has the money, and the Woman has — herself, her 
body and her charm. She traffics with man for what he 
will give, and she pays with her soul... . To her the man 
comes from the market-place soiled and worn, and lays at 
her feet his gain, and in return she gives him of her wit, of 
her handsome person, gowned and jewelled, of her beauty, 
of her body itself. Sheis Queen! She amuses her lord, she 
beguiles him, she whets his appetite and pushes him forth 

2L 


516 TOGETHER 


to the morrow’s fight, to bring back to her more pelf, to 
make her greater yet. She sits idle in her cabin-palace, 
attended by servants, or goes forth on her errands to show 
herself before the world as her man’s Queen. So long as she 
may but please this lord of hers, so long as she may hold 
him by her mind or her body, she will be Queen. She 
has found something softer than labor with her hands, 
easier than the pains of childbirth, — she has found the 
secret of rule, — mastery over her former master, the 
slave ruling the lord. Like the last wife of the barbarian 
king she is heaped with jewels and served with fine wines 
and foods and lives in the palace, — the favorite. 

And Woman, now the mistress rather than the wife, has 
longings for Love. She listens to her heart, and it whispers 
strange fancies. ‘‘I cannot love this man whom I have 
married, though he feeds me and gives me of his best. My 
soul will have none of him, — I will not consent to live with 
him and bear children for him and thus beaslave. Lo, am I 
not a Queen, to give and take back, to swear and then swear 
again? I will divorce this man who can no longer thrill me, 
and I will take another dearer to my heart, — and thus I 
shall be nobler than I was. I shall bea person with a soul 
of my own. To have me man must win me not once, but 
daily. For marriage without the love of my soul is beastly.” 
So she cheats herself with fine phrases and shirks. Small 
comradeship here! Marriage to this woman is a state of 
personal gratification, the best bargain she can make with 
Mans ake 

To this state has come the honorable condition of mar- 
riage in a country where ‘“men’”’ — and surely women! — 
“are born free and equal.’ The flower of successful woman- 
hood — those who have bargained shrewdly — are to be 
found overfed, overdressed, sensualized, in great hotels, on 
mammoth steamers and luxurious trains, rushing hither and 
thither on idle errands. They have lost their prime 
function: they will not or they cannot get children. They 
are free! As never women were before. And these wives 


TOGETHER 517 


are the custodians of men, not merely of their purses 
but of their souls. They whisper to them the Ideals - 
of their hearts: ‘‘Come bring me money, and I will 
kiss you. Make me a name before the world, and I will 
noise it abroad. Build me a house more splendid than other 
houses, set me above my sisters, and I will reflect honor on 
you among men for the clothes | wear and the excellent 
shape of my figure.’’ 

And thus, unwittingly, Woman becomes again in the 
revolution of the ages what she was at first, the female crea- 
ture, the possession, the thing for lust and for amusement, — 
the cherished slave. For the death of woman’s soul follows 
when she pays with her body, — a simple, immutable law. 
é Woman in America, splendidly free and Queen! 
What have you done with the men who were given into your 
charge? Clever, beautiful, brilliant, — our most shining 
prize, — but what have you done for the souls of the men 
given into your keeping? ... The answer roars up from 
the city streets, —the most material age and the most 
material men and the least lovely civilization on God’s 
earth. No longer the fighting companion at man’s side, but 
reaching out for yourselves, after your own desires, you have 
become the slave of the Brute as you were before. Anda 
neurotic slave. For when Woman is no longer comrade of 
man in the struggle, she is either Nothing or a — but blot 
the word! 


Perfect justice, a complete picture of society in a civiliza- 
tion of eighty millions, requires many shades. The darker 
shades are true only of the rotting refuse, the scum of the 
whole. Among the married millions most are, fortunately, 
still struggling through the earlier types from the pioneer to 
the economist. But as the water runs there lies the sea 
beyond. From the prairie village to the city tenement, the 
American woman sees in marriage the fulfilment of her 
heart’s desire, — to be Queen, to rule and not work. Thus 
for emancipated Woman. 


518 TOGETHER 


And the poor creature Man, who fights for his Queen? 
A trained energy, a vessel of careless passion, a blind doer, 
dreaming great truths and seeing little ends, — Man is still 
abroad ranging his forest, his hunting blood up, “playing 
the game.’”’ There are moments when his sleep is troubled 
with feverish dreams in which he hears murmurs, — “The 
body is more than raiment,” and “The soul is more than the 
body”; ‘There are other hunting-grounds, another warfare.” 
But roused from these idle fancies he sallies forth from his 
cabin-palace, or his hotel apartment, or his steam-heated 
and childless flat into the old fray, to kill his meat and bring 
it home. ... We chatter of the curse of Castle Garden, 
unmindful that in the dumb animal hordes, who labor 
and breed children, lies the future. FOR THEIRS WILL BE 
THE LAND, when the blond hunter of the market and his 
pampered female are swept into the dust heap. 


CHAPTER LXVIII 


In the vast eighteen-story, thousand-room New York 
hotel where Isabelle Lane stayed for the night on her way 
west, there was the usual constant bustle ef arriving and de- 
parting people. The heat, the crowd, the luxury of this cliff- 
city with its throngs of much-dressed men and women over- 
whelmed Isabelle with a sense of startling unreality. It was 
not simply that she had been removed from the noise of city 
life for a number of months, secluded in the quiet of open 
spaces, and that the latest novelty in New York hotels con- 
trasted sharply with primitive Grosvenor. But she found 
herself examining the scene, from the moment she entered 
the crowded foyer with its stucco-marble columns and bronze 
railings, its heavy hangings and warm atmosphere, with 
eyes that seemed to observe what was there before her for 
the first time. She looked at the thick rugs, the uniformed 
servants, the line of pale, sleek young men in the office en- 
closure, the swarming ‘“guests”’ (according to the euphe- 
mistic slang of American hotels!),— all these women in 
evening gowns, much jewelled, on their way to dinner, with 
their attendant males; and she asked herself if it were the 
same world that she had always known. 

The little bronze doors in the bank of elevators opened and 
shut, taking in and disgorging men and women, to shoot 
upwards to the tiers of partitioned privacy above or to 
hurry forth on their errands. Waiting for the hotel maid 
to fetch her key, Isabelle felt like a soul resurrected from 
a grave, come back to experience what had once been its 
theatre of activity and joy. She felt the tense hum of life 
in the activity of the clerks behind the desk, the servants 
hurrying on their errands, the coming and going of the 
horde of people, among whom watchful house detectives 

519 


520 TOGETHER 


moved about silently. She knew that across the narrow 
street was another even larger cliff-city, where the same 
picture of life was repeating itself, and around the corner 
there were four or five more, and farther away dozens 
almost exactly like this one, — all crowded, humming 
with people, with the same heavy atmosphere of human 
beings hived together in hot air, men and women dressed 
like these, feeding like these in great halls, spending lavishly 
for comfort, pleasure, and repose! .. . 

This mammoth caravansary was a symbol of the broad, 
riotously rich country, — a spiritual and material symbol, 
representing its thoughts, its ideals, its art, its beauty, its 
joy. Into these metropolitan cliff-cities flowed the stream 
of dominant, successful lives of the nation, seeking to find 
satisfaction for their efforts, their rightful triumph. Once 
Isabelle had had the child’s pleasure in the hotel pageant. 
Later it had been an accepted convenience. Now she sat 
there looking on as from a great distance, and she said over 
and over wonderingly: “Can this be life? No, this is not 
life, — it is not real!” 

At the news-stand near by a group of men and women were 
loitering, the men buying theatre tickets, the women turning 
over the leaves of magazines, scanning lazily the titles of 
novels. The magazines were stacked in rows, each with a 
gaudy cover, — “artistic”? or designed merely to capture 
the eye by a blaze of color. One of the women turned the 
leaves of several novels, idly, with a kind of fat ennui, as 
if loath to be tempted even by mental dissipation. Then 
noting a title that had somehow lodged itself with favorable 
associations in her brain, she said to the girl behind the 
counter, ‘“ You may send this up to my room.” 

So the work of imagination, the picture of life, the soul of 
the poet creator, was slipped from the pile to be sent upwards 
along with the other purchases of the day, —clothes and 
jewellery and candy, — what the woman had desired that day. 
This group moved on and another took its place. The books 
and the magazines disappeared like the theatre tickets and 


TOGETHER 521 


the cigars and cigarettes at the neighboring stand, — feeding 
the maw of the multitude, which sought to tickle different 
groups of brain cells. Gay little books, saucy little books, 
cheap little books, pleasant little books, — all making their 
bid to certain cells in the gray matter of these sated human 
beings! A literature composed chiefly by women for women, 
—tons of wood pulp, miles of linen covers, rivers of 
ink, — all to feed the prevailing taste, like the ribbons, the 
jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets! A great age, as 
Mr. Gossom, swelling with pride, would have said, and a 
great people, that has standardized its pleasures and has 
them marketed in convenient packages for all tastes! An 
age of women’s ideals, a literature by women for women!... 

Isabelle bought a copy of Mr. Gossom’s patriotic magazine 
for the People, and turned its fresh pages with a curiosity to 
see what it was like, and who was writing now. The senti- 
mental novel by the popular English novelist that she had 
looked at when it first appeared came to its conclusion in this 
number. And it not having met with the expected popular 
approval, for all its sentiment, Mr. Gossom had abandoned 
the idyllic in favor of a startling series of articles on ‘‘ Our 
National Crimes,” plentifully and personally illustrated. 
Mr. Gossom would have preferred to prolong the sentimental 
note, — ‘pleasant reading,’’ as he called it; personally he 
did not approve of hanging up the nation’s wash in the front 
yard, for he himself was an investor in corporations. But 
what could he do? It was his business to give the People 
what the People wanted. And just now they wanted to be 
shocked and outraged by revelations of business perfidy. 
Another six months, perhaps, when the public was tired of 
contemplating rascality, the editor would find something 
sweet, full of country charm and suburban peace, to feed 
them. ... On the title-page there were the old names and 
some new ones, but the same grist, —a ‘‘homely”’ story of 
“real life’? among the tenements, a “ humorous” story of the 
new school, an article on a marvellous invention to set the 
public on the gape, etc.... Fosdick had an article of a 


§22 TOGETHER 


serious nature, on Trades Unions and Socialism. ‘So Dickie, 
having ceased to roll about the world,’ thought Isabelle, 
‘has begun to write about it.’ She turned down the page 
at his article and looked into the advertising section. That 
was where the People’s excelled, — in its thick advertising 
section. Between the automobiles and the pianolas were in- 
serted some pages of personal puff, photographs of the coming 
contributors, and an account of their deeds, — the menus 
prepared for the coming months. Isabelle looked at the 
faces of the contributors, among whom was Dick’s face, very 
ssmooth and serious. As a whole the photographs might be 
those of any Modern Order of Redmen, consciously posed 
before the camera of Fame. But they gave that personal 
touch so necessary to please the democratic taste. Thus 
from Aischylus to Mr. Gossom’s “‘literature.”’... Itseemed 
no more real, no more a part of what life is in its essence, 
than the hotel and the sleek people thronging it. 


When Isabelle entered the dining room, the head waiter 
placed her in a sheltered nook behind one of the stucco 
pillars, not far from the stringed instruments concealed in a 
little Gothic choir loft over the entrance. There were flowers 
on the tables and multitudinous electric candles in pink silk 
shades. The open-timbered ceiling had been decorated by an 
artist of some fame, who had sought in vain to give to this 
rich feeding place of the herd the grace of an Italian palace. 
Two long mural paintings adorned the end walls, and six 
highly colored tapestries were hung at equal spaces laterally. 
In spite’of the large proportions of the room, it was insuffer- 
ably hot and heavy with the odors of wilting flowers and 
perspiring humanity, somewhat perfumed, and of foods and 
wines. The early diners were leaving for the theatres and 
opera, the women trailing their rich gowns over the rugged 
floor as they stared about them. (They were mostly stran-| 
gers from inland cities who had been attracted by the 
fame of this newest hotel.) Their places were quickly taken 
‘by others in couples and in parties, and the hum of talk 


TOGETHER 523 


was feebly punctuated by occasional bursts of teasing sound 
from the -stringed instruments. Isabelle felt curiously 
alone, sitting here in the crowded dining room, — alone as 
she had not felt on the most solitary hillside of Grosvenor. 
She closed her eyes and saw the village in its cup among the 
mountains glittering white in the Marchsun. The thin, pure 
air of the forests filled her nostrils. She was homesick — 
for the first time in her life! With a little shake she roused 
herself and turned to Fosdick’s article that she had brought 
with her to the table. It was all about the progress of the 
socialist parties abroad, their aims and accomplishments, 
showing first-hand observation and knowledge; also a viva- 
ciously critical spirit, —in short what Gossom would call 
‘a smart article.” ... There was another “‘serious”’ article 
on the problem of housing the poor, amply illustrated. In 
the newspapers that she had glanced through on her long 
journey, there had been likewise much about ‘‘ movements,”’ 


~ political and social, speeches and societies organized to pro- 


mote this interest or that, and endless references to the 
eternal conflict of capital and labor, in the struggle for their 
respective shares of the human cake. It was the same with 
all the more serious magazines at the news-stand; they were 
filled with discussion of ‘‘ movements” for the betterment of 
humanity, of talk about this means or that to make the world 
run a little more smoothly. It was proof, according to the 
editors, of the sound spirit of democracy, fighting for ideals, 
making progress along right lines. In other days Isabelle 
would have considered Fosdick’s article brilliant, if not pro- 
found. She would have felt that here was something very 
important for serious people to know, and believed she was 
thinking. ... To-night Fosdick’s phrases seemed dead, like 
this hotel life, this hotel reading matter. Even the impas- 
sioned editorial she had seen on child-labor laws, and the 
article on factory inspection, and the bill to regulate the 
hours of labor on railroads — all the “ uplift’? movements — 
seemed dead, wooden, — part of the futile machinery with 
which earnest people deluded themselves that they were 


524 TOGETHER 


doing something. Would all of them, even if successful, 
right the wrong of life in any deep sense? .. . 

Isabelle laid down the magazine and looked over the room 
again. Her eyes fell on a party of four at one of the tables 
in front of her, beneath the mural painting. While the food 
she had ordered was being slowly put before her, she watched 
them. There seemed something familiar about the black 
back of the man at the nearer side of the table, about the way 
he leaned forward, gesticulating from his wrists, and also about 
the large woman at his right with her head turned away. 
After a time this head came around and looked down the 
room. It was Conny! Conny splendidly blond and large, 
in half-mourning, with a fresh touch of color on her pale face, 
her beautiful shoulders quite bare. And that full mouth 
and competent chin, — no one but Conny! Isabelle hastily 
looked down at her plate. She had not recognized the 
others at the table. Conny was seated just beneath the 
pink and white painting representing’ spring, — a mixture 
of Botticelli brought to date and Puvis. And Conny carried 
on the allegory of Flora into full-blown summer. She was 
drinking her wine meditatively, and her firm chin — the 
Senator had said it was moulded for an empress — was 
slightly tilted, revealing the thick, muscular neck. 

So long ago it was when Isabelle had been thrilled by her 
luncheon at the Woodyards’. She hurried her dinner now to 
escape the necessity of talking to Conny when her party 
passed out. But as she prepared to rise, she saw that they 
were coming towards her and sat down again, opening the 
magazine. From it she could see them, Conny in the lead 
sweeping forward in that consciously unconscious manner 
with which she took her world. The man behind her had 
some trouble in keeping up with her pace; he limped, 


and almost tripped on Conny’s train. Isabelle saw him ~ 


out of her lowered eyelids. It was Tom “airy. They 
almost brushed her table as they passed, Conny and after 
her Tom. Conny was drawling in her treble note, “She 
made a great sensation in Herndon’s piece over in London,” 


TOGETHER 525 


And Isabelle was conscious that she was sitting alone 
at the hotel table, staring into vacancy, with a waiter 
impatiently eying the coin in her hand... . 

She had looked at him for half an hour, not knowing him! 
And suddenly she saw how dead it all was: not merely her 
feeling for Cairy, but her whole past, the petty things done 
or felt by that petty other self, ending with the tragic fact 
of Vickers’s sacrifice. She had passed through into another 
world. .. . This man who had sat there near her all the 
evening she had once believed that she loved more than life 
itself, — his mere voice had made her tremble, — this God 
she had created to worship! And she had not recognized 
him. | 

High up in her corner of the brick and stone cliff above the 
twinkling city, Isabelle knelt by the open window, looking 
out into the foggy night. Unconscious of the city sounds 
rising in one roar from the pavement, — the voice of the giant 
metropolis, — she knelt there thinking of that dead past, 
that dead self, and of Vickers, a solemn unearthly music 
like the march of life in her ears. She knelt there, wide- 
eyed, able to see it all calmly, something like prayer strug- 
gling upwards in her heart for expression. 


CHAPTER LXIX 


Aut night long in the corridors of the cliff-city the elevator 
doors had clicked, as they were opened and shut on the 
ceaseless trips to pack away the people in the eighteen stories. 
In the morning they became even livelier in their effort te 
take down the hungry guests for breakfast and the day’s 
business. The corridors and the lobbies and the foyer were 
thronged with the same people, freshly dressed for the day, 
fat or lean, heavy eyed or alert, pale, nervous, with quick 
tones and jerky movements. And there was a line of new 
arrivals before a fresh row of pale clerks. The prominent 
people of the city, especially the women, had already left 
town for the Springs or Florida or Paris or the Mediter- 
ranean, anywhere but here! Their flitting, however, had 
made no impression on the hotels or the honey-hives along 
the avenue. What they abandoned — the city in March 
with its theatres, opera, restaurants, and shops —the pro- 
vincials came hungrily to suck. For the cast-off, the 
spurned, is always Somebody’s desired. 

It was the same on the other side of the ferry in the rail- 
road terminal, hurrying throngs pressing through the little 
wickets that bore the legend of the destination of each 
train, — ‘The Florida East Coast Limited,” “New Orleans, 
Texas, and the South,” ‘ Washington and Virginia,” etc. 
From this centre the strands of travel ran outwards to 
many beguiling points. And there were two perpetual 
motions, — the crowd flowing out to some joy beyond the 
horizon, and the crowd flowing back irresistibly tothe sucking 
whirlpool. Always movement, change, endless going, going 
with these people, — the spirit of the race in their restless 
feet! There was always the Desirable beyond at the other 
endoftheline. All the world that could move wasin unstable 

526 


TOGETHER 527 


flux, scurrying hither and thither in hot search for the phan- 
tom Better — change, variety — to be had for the price of a 
ticket. 

It was a relief to be on the Pullman, seated for a time in a 
small fixed space, free from the revolving whirlpool of rest- 
less humanity, though that fixity itself was being whirled 
across the land. With a sigh Isabelle leaned back and 
looked at the passing country outside. The snow had long 
disappeared, leaving the brown earth naked and forlorn. 
It was the same landscape, under similar conditions, that 
Isabelle had gazed at the spring afternoon when she was 
hurrying back to meet Cairy, his violets on her breast. 
It seemed to her then that she was happy, with a wonderful 
‘happiness. Now she wascontent.... Asthe train rushed 
through the Alleghanies, the first faint touches of spring 
appeared in the swelling stems of the underbrush, in the 
full streams of yellow water, and the few spears of green 
grass beside the sheltering fence posts, and the soft misty 
atmosphere full of brooding changes over the level fields. 

Isabelle became eager to get on to her journey’s end, to 
see her husband. Once out there with him, whatever accident 
befell them, she was equal to it, would see its real meaning, 
would find in it Peace. She had brought with her the copy 
of the People’s and a number of other magazines and 
books, and as the day waned she tried to interest herself in 
some of their “pleasant” stories. But her eyes wandered 
back to the landscape through which they were speeding, to 
the many small towns past which they darted, — ugly little 
places with ugly frame or brick buildings, stores and houses 
and factories, dirty and drab, unlike the homely whiteness 
of the Grosvenor village street. But they were strangely 
attracting to her eye, — these little glimpses of other lives, 
seen as the train sped by, at the back porches, the windows, 
the streets; the lives of the many fixed and set by circum- 
stance, revolving between home and workshop, the lives of 
the multitude not yet evolved into ease and aspiration. 
But they counted, these lives of the multitude, — that was 


528 TOGETHER 


what she felt this day; they counted quite as much as hers 
or any. She had travelled back and forth over this main 
artery of the Atlantic and Pacific many times from her child- 
hood up. But hitherto the scene had meant nothing to her; 
she had never looked at it before. She had whirled through 
the panorama of states, thinking only of herself, what was to 
happen to her at the end of the journey. But to-day it 
was her country, her people, her civilization that she looked 
out on. The millions that were making their lives in all 
these ugly little houses, these mills and shops, men and 
women together, loving, marrying, breeding, and above all 
living! ‘All of life is good!’’ Each one of these millions 
had its own drama, each to itself, as hers had been to her, 
with that tragic importance of being lived but once from 
the germ to the ultimate dust. Each one was its own epic, 
its own experience, and its own fulfilment. As Renault once 
said, ‘‘ Any of the possibilities may lie in a human soul.” 
And in that was the hope and the faith for Democracy, 
—the infinite variety of these possibilities ! 

So the literature of ‘‘movements’”’ and causes, the effort 
by organization to right the human fabric, seemed futile, 
for the most part. If man were right with himself, square 
with his own soul, each one of the millions, there would be 
no wrongs to right by machinery, by laws, by discussion, 
by agitation, by theories or beliefs. Hach must start with 
self, and right that. ... Yes, the world needed a Reli- 
gion, not movements nor reforms! 


. . . Sometime during the night Isabelle was roused by 
the stopping of the train, and pulling aside the curtain of the 
window she looked out. The train was standing in the yards 
of a large station with many switch lights feebly winking 
along the tracks. At first she did not recognize the place ; 
it might be any one of the division headquarters where the 
through trains stopped to change engines. But as she 
looked at the maze of tracks, at the dingy red brick building 
beyond the yards, she finally realized that it was Torso, the 


TOGETHER 529 


spot where her married life had begun. It gave her an odd 
sensation to lie there and look out on the familiar office 
building where she used to go for John —so long ago! 
Torso, she had felt at that time, was cramping, full of 
commonplace, ordinary people that one did not care to 
know. She had been very anxious to escape to something 
larger, —to St. Louis and then to New York. She wondered 
what she would think of it now if she should go back, — of 
Mrs. Fraser and the Griscoms. Then she remembered the 
Falkners, and how badly it had gone since with Bessie. It 
was sad to think back over the years and see how it might 
have been different, and for the moment she forgot that if 
it had been different in any large sense, the result would 
have been different. She would not be here now, the 
person she was, Regret is the most useless of human 
states of mind. ... The railroad operatives were busy 
with lanterns about the train, tapping wheels, filling the 
ice-boxes and gas-tanks, and switching cars. She could see 
the faces of the men as they passed her section in the light 
of their lanterns. With deliberate, unconscious motions they 
performed their tasks. Like the face of that lad on the 
engine at White River, these were the faces of ordinary men, 
privates of the industrial world, and yet each had something 
about it distinctive, of its own. What kept these privates 
at their work, each in his place? Hunger, custom, faith? 
Surely something beyond themselves that made life seem to 
each one of them reasonable, desirable. Something not very 
different from the spirit which lay in her own soul, like 
a calming potion, which she could almost touch when she 
needed its strength. “ For life is good —all of it!” . . . and 
“ Peace is the rightful heritage of every soul.” 

The train rolled on towards its destination, and she fell 
asleep again, reassured. 


2m 


CHAPTER LXX 


At the station in St. Louis a young man came forward from 
the crowd about the gate and raised his hat, explaining to 
Isabelle that he had been sent by her husband to meet her. 
Mr. Lane, he said further, was in court and found it im- 
possible to be there. When she was in the cab and her 
trunk had been secured the young man asked: — 

“Where shall I tell him? The Price house?” 

A picture of the familiar empty rooms, of waiting there 
with her ghosts, aggravated the disappointment she had 
felt at not seeing John on her arrival. She hesitated. 

“Could I go to the court ?”’ 

“Sure — of course; only Mr. Lane thought —” 

“Get in, won’t you, and come with me,” Isabelle said, 
interrupting him,.and then as the young man shyly took 
the vacant seat, she asked: — 

“ Aren’t you Teddy Bliss? . . . I haven’t seen you for — 
years!’’ She added with a smile, “Since you played base- 
ball in your father’s back yard. How is your mother?” 

It gave her a sense of age to find the son of her old friend 
in this smiling young man. Life was getting on apace.... 
The cab made its way slowly into the heart of the city, 
and they talked of the old times when the Blisses had been 
neighbors across the alley from the Prices. Isabelle wished 
to ask the young man about the trial. The New York paper 
that she had seen on the train had only a short account. 
But she hesitated to show her ignorance, and Teddy Bliss 
was too much abashed before the handsome wife of his 
“boss’’ to offer any information. Finally Isabelle asked: — 

“Ts the trial nearly over?”’ 

“Pretty near the end. Cross-examination to-day. When 

530 . 


TOGETHER 531 


I left, Mr. Lane was on the stand. Then come the 
arguments and the judge’s charge, and it goes to the 
jury.” 

And he added with irresistible impulse: — 

“Tt’s a great case, Mrs. Lane! ... When our lawyers 
get after that district attorney, he won’t know what’s 
happened to him. * .. Why, the road’s secured the best 
legal talent that ever argued a case in this district, so they 
tell me. That man Brinkerhoff is a corker !”’ 

“Indeed!” Isabelle replied, smiling at the young man’s 
enthusiasm for the scrap. To him it was all a matter of 
legal prowess with victory to the heavy battalions. 

“Federal court-rooms are in here temporarily, — crowded 
out of the federal building,’? her companion explained as 
the cab stopped before a grimy office building. 

Isabelle had expected that the trial would be in some sort 
of public building, which might have at least the semblance 
of serving as a temple of justice. But justice, it seemed, like 
most else in this day, had to accommodate itself to the prac- 
tical life. . . . Upstairs there was a small crowd about the 
door of the court-room, through which the young man 
gained admission by a whispered word to the tobacco- 
chewing veteran that kept the gate. 

The court-room was badly lighted by two windows at the 
farther end, in front of which on a low platform behind a 
plain oak desk sat the judge, and grouped about him in- 
formally the jurors, the lawyers, and stenographers, and 
mixed with these the defendants and witnesses. The body of 
the room, which was broken by bare iron pillars, was well 
filled with reporters and curious persons. Isabelle sank into 
a vacant chair near the door and looked eagerly for her 
husband. At last by craning her head she caught a partial 
view of him where he sat behind a pillar, his face bent 
downwards leaning on his hand, listening with an expression 
of weariness to the wrangle of counsel. He was sallow, and 
his attitude was abstracted, the attitude in which he listened 
at board meetings or gathered the substance of a wordy re- 


532 TOGETHER 


port from a subordinate. It was not the attitude of a 
criminal on trial for his honor! ... . 

“That’s Brinkerhoff, the big gun,’”’ young Bliss whispered 
to Isabelle, indicating a gentle, gray-headed, smooth-shaven 
man, who seemed to be taking a nap behind his closed eyes. 

The judge himself was lolling back listlessly, while several 
men in front of him talked back and forth colloquially. The 
argument between counsel proceeded with polite irony 
and sarcastic iteration of stock phrases, “If your honor 
pleases,’’ . . . “My learned brother, the district attorney,” 
. . . “The learned counsel for the defence,” etc. The judge’s 
eyes rested on the ceiling, as if he too wished to take a nap. 
There was a low hum of conversation among the men grouped 
about the desk meanwhile, and occasionally one of the young 
men who had been scribbling on a pad would grasp his hat 
hurriedly and leave the room. ‘Thus the proceedings dragged 
on. 

“They are arguing about admitting some evidence,” the 
young man at her side explained... . 

Isabelle, who had been living in a suppressed state of 
emotional excitement ever since that night three days before 
when she had turned from the newspapers to pack her trunk, 
felt a sudden limp reaction come over her. Apparently the 
whole proceeding was without vitality, — a kind of routine 
through which all parties had to go, knowing all the time that 
it settled nothing, — did not much count. The judge was 
a plain, middle-aged man in a wrinkled sack coat, — very 
much in appearance what Conny would call a “bounder.’’ 
The defending counsel talked among themselves or wrote 
letters or took naps, like the celebrated Mr. Brinkerhoff, 
and the counsel for the government listened or made a 
remark in the same placid manner. It was all very common- 
place, — some respectable gentlemen engaged in a dull 
technical discussion over the terms of the game, in which 
seemingly there was no momentous personal interest involved. 

“The government’s case will collapse if they can’t get those 
books of the coal companies in as evidence,” young Bliss 


TOGETHER 533 


informed Isabelle. He seemed to understand the rules of 
the game, — the point at issue. 

Surely the methods of modern justice are unpicturesque, 
unimpressive! Compare this trial of the cause of the People 
against the mighty Atlantic and Pacific railroad corporation 
et al. with the trial of the robber baron dragged from his 
bleak castle perched above the highroad where he had laid 
in wait to despoil his fellow-men, weaker vessels, into the 
court of his Bishop, — there to be judged, to free himself if 
he might by grasping hot iron with his naked hand, by making 
oath over the bones of some saint, and if found guilty to be 
condemned to take the cross in the crusade for the Saviour’s 
sepulchre. Fantastic, that; but human — dramatic! And 
starkly memorable, like the row of his victim’s heads nailed 
along the battlements of his castle. More civilized, the 
modern tyrant takes the cash and lets the victim die a natural 
death. Or compare this tedious legal game — which does 
not count — with that pageant of England’s trial of a 
corrupt administrator at the bar of Parliament! The 
issues involved are hardly less vital to millions in the case of 
the People against the Atlantic and Pacific et al. than in the 
case of the races of India against Warren Hastings; but 
democracy is the essence of horse-sense. ‘For these gentle- 
men before me,’ the judge seemed to say, ‘are not criminals, 
no matter how the jury may render its verdict, in any ordi- 
nary sense of the term. They may have exceeded the pre- 
scribed limits in playing the game that all men play, — the 
great predatory game of get all you can and keep it!... 
But they are not common criminals.’ 

At last the judge leaned forward, his elbows on the desk : — 

“The court orders that the papers in question be admitted 
as evidence pertinent to this case.” 

Teddy Bliss looked chagrined. His side had been ruled 
against. 

“They’ll be sure to reverse the decision on appeal,’”’ he 
whispered consolatorily to his employer’s wife. “ An excep- 
tion has been taken.’’ 


534 TOGETHER 


That was apparently the opinion of those concerned who 
were grouped about the judge’s desk. ‘There was no con- 
sternation, merely a slight movement as if to free muscles 
cramped by one position, a word or two among counsel. The 
great Brinkerhoff still wore that placid look of contempla- 
tion, as if he were thinking of the new tulip bulbs he had im- 
ported from Holland for his house up the Hudson. He was 
not aroused even when one of his fellow-counsel asked him 
a question. He merely removed his glasses, wiped them 
reflectively, and nodded to his colleague benignantly. He 
knew, as the others knew, that the case would be appealed 
from the verdict of the jury to a higher court, and very likely 
would turn up ultimately in the highest court of all at Wash- 
ington, where after the lapse of several years the question at 
issue would be argued wholly on technicalities, and finally de- 
cided according to the psychological peculiarities of the various 
personalities then composing the court. The residuum of 
justice thus meted out to his clients — if they were not suc- 
cessful before in maintaining their contention — would not 
affect these honorable gentlemen appreciably. The corpora- 
tion would pay the legal expenses of the protracted litigation, 
and hand the bill on to the public ultimately, and the people 
by their taxes would pay their share of this row. ... He 
put on his glasses and resumed his meditation. * 

“Court is adjourned.”’ At last! Isabelle stood up eagerly, 
anxious to catch her husband’s attention. He was talking 
with the lawyers. The young clerk went up to him and 
touched his elbow, and presently Lane came down the room 
in the stream of reporters and lawyers bent on getting 
to luncheon. It was neither the place nor the time that — 
Isabelle would have preferred for meeting her husband after 
their long separation. There was so much in her heart, 
—this meeting meant so much, must be so much for 
them both in all the future years. The familiar solid figure, — 
with the reserved, impassive face came nearer; Lane reached ~ 
out his hand. There were lines about the mouth, and his — 
hair seemed markedly gray. 


TOGETHER 535 


“ John!” was all she could say. 

“Glad to see you, Isabelle!’ he replied. “Sorry I couldn’t 
meet you at the station. Everything all right?” 

It was his usual kindly, rather short-hand manner with her. 

“Yes,” she said, “everything is all right.”” She felt as if 
all the significance of her act had been erased. 

“You know your mother hasn’t come back from the 
Springs,” he added, “but they are expecting you at the 
house.”’ 

“Can’t we go somewhere and have luncheon together? I 
want so much to see you!” she urged. 

“T wish I might, but I have these lawyers on my hands — 
must take them to the club for luncheon. Sorry I shall be 
kept here until late in the afternoon. I will put you in a 
cab.’”’ And he led the way to the elevator. As always he 
was kind and considerate. But in his equable manner was 
there also some touch of coldness, of aloofness from this wife, 
who had taken this curious opportunity to come into his 
affairs ? 

“Thank you,” she faltered, as he looked down the street 
foracab. ‘“Couldn’t I go somewhere about here for luncheon 
and come back atverwards to the court- -room? I should like 
to wait for you.” 

“Why, if you want to,” he replied, looking at her with 
surprise. And as if divining a reason for her agitation, he 
said: ‘You mustn’t mind what the papers say. It won’t 
amount to anything, either way it goes.” 

“T think I'll stay,” she said hurriedly. 

““Very well. I will call Bliss to take you to a hotel.’’ 

He beckoned to the waiting young man, and while Mr. 
Bliss was finding a cab, Lane said to his wife: — 

“You are looking very well. The country has done you 
good ?”’ 

“Yes! I am very well, — all well!’’ She tried to smile 
buoyantly. “I don’t expect ever to be ill again.” 

He received this as a man accustomed to the vagaries of 
woman’s health, and said, “That’s good!” 


536 TOGETHER 


Then he put her into the cab, gave some instructions to the 
young man, and raised his hat. His manner was perfect to 
her, and yet Isabelle went to her luncheon with the bubbling 
Mr. Bliss sad at heart. She was such an outsider, such a 
stranger to her husband’s inner self! That it was to be 
expected, her own fault, the result of the misspent years of 
married life made it none the easier to bear. . . 

Mr. Teddy Bliss exercised his best connoisseurship in 
selecting the dishes from the printed broadside put before him 
at the hotel restaurant, consulting Isabelle frequently as to her 
tastes, where the desire to please was mingled with the pride 
of appearing self-possessed. Having finally decided on 
tomato bisque aux crutons, prairie chicken, grilled sweet 
potatoes, salad and péche Melba, which was all very much to 
his liking, he dropped the card and looked at Isabelle with a 
broad smile. The world and its affairs still had an irre- 
pressible zest and mirthful aspect to young Mr. Bliss. 

“You’re likely to hear some or-a-tory this afternoon, Mrs. 
Lane,” he scoffed. ‘‘The district attorney is a Southerner, 
and he’s going to spread himself when he makes his plea, you 
can believe. It’s his chance to get talked about from San 
Francisco to Washington. ... Of course it don’t cut any 
ice what he says, but the papers will play it up large, and 
that’s what they are after, the government. You see’? — he 
waxed confidential — “the government’s got to save its face 
somehow after all the talk and the dust they have raised. 
If they can secure a conviction, — oh, just a nominal fine 
(you know there is no prison penalty), — why, it’ll be good 
campaign material this fall. So they fixed on the A. and P. 
as a shining mark for their shot. And you know there’s a 
good deal of feeling, especially in this state, against rail- 
roads.” 

“T see!’? In spite of herself Isabelle was amused at the 
naive assurance the young man had given her that nothing 
serious could happen to her husband, — not imprisonment! 
Mr. Bliss’s point of view about the famous case was evidently 
that of the railroad office, tinged with a blithe sporting in- 


TOGETHER . 537 


terest in a legal scrap. The ill-paid government attorneys 
trying the case were a lot of “light-weight mits,” put up 
against the best ‘“talent’”’ in the country employed by the 
powerful corporation to protect itself; in short, a sure thing 
for the railroad in the final knockout if not in the first round. 
“Tt was bad, their getting in those Pleasant Valley Com- 
pany books,” he remarked less exuberantly. “ But it won’t 
make any difference in the end. The papers have made the 
most of that evidence already.” 
‘““Why do you suppose the newspapers are so bitter against 
the road ?”’ uf 
“They aren’t, the best of them; they know too much 
what’s good for them. They just print the record of the 
trial. As for the sensational ones, you see it’s this way, — 
they don’t care, they haven’t any convictions. It is just a 
matter of business for them. Slamming the corporations 
suits their readers. The people who buy most of the papers 
_ like to have the prosperous classes slammed. Most people are 
envious; they want the other fellow’s roll, — isn’t that so? 
They think they are as good as the best, and it makes ’em 
sick to see the other fellow in his automobile when they are 
earning fifteen or eighteen per! They don’t stop to consider 
that it’s brains that makes the diff.” 
“So it is merely envy that produces all this agitation ?”’ 
“T am not saying that the corporations are philanthropic 
institutions,’ Mr. Bliss continued didactically; “of course 
they aren’t. They are out for business, and every man 
knows what that means. I suppose they do a good many 
tough things if they get the chance — same as their critics. 
What of it? Wouldn’t the little fellow do the same thing, if 
he could, — had the chance? .. . What would this country 
be to-day without the corporations, the railroads? With- 
out the Atlantic and Pacific, right herein St. Louis? And all 
the work of those men they are prosecuting and fining and 
| trying to put into jail? Why, if the President had his way, 
: he’d lock up every man that had enough sense and snap in 
him to do things, and he’d make this country like a Methodist 


£ 
¥ 


538 3 TOGETHER 


camp meeting after the shouting is over! There’s no sense 
to1bs? 

Isabelle laughed at the young man’s vigorous defence of 
our” side. It seemed useless to attempt to pick flaws in 
his logic, and it would hardly become her as the wife of his 
“boss’’ to betray that she was not wholly convinced of his 
accuracy. 

“Besides, why can’t the government let bygones be by- 
gones? Every one knows that the roads did some queer 
things in the old days. But why rake up old crimes and make 
a mess? I say let’s have a clean slate and begin over. . . . 
But if they keep on legislating and howling against corpora- 
tions, like some of these trust-busting state legislatures, 
we'll have a panic sure thing, and that will do the business 
for the reformers, won’t it now?” 

This, as Isabelle realized; was, in the popular language of 
Mr. Teddy Bliss, her husband’s point of view, the philosophy of 
the ruling class, imbibed by their dependents. As the young 
man turned from expounding the business situation to his 
succulent bird, Isabelle had time for reflection. 

This young man was sucking his views about honesty, 
business morality, from the Atlantic and Pacific, from her 
husband. One of Renault’s sentences came to her, “ We 
all live in large part on a borrowed capital of suggested 
ideas, motives, desires.’”” And the corollary: “Each is re- 
sponsible not only for the capital that he borrows from 
others, — that it should really be the right idea for him, — 
but also for the capital he lends, — the suggestions he gives 
to others — possibly less stable minds. For thus by borrow- 
ing and lending ideas is created that compulsive body of 
thought throughout the universe on which we all act.” 

Her husband was on trial for that which he had borrowed 
and thus made his own, as well as for that which he had 
passed on into life —to Mr. Teddy Bliss, for example. 


(79 


CHAPTER LXXI 


THE government attorney had already begun his argument 
when Isabelle, escorted by Teddy Bliss, returned to the 
court-room. The district attorney was a short, thick-set, 
sallow-faced man, with bushy gray hair growing in the 
absurd ‘ Pompadour”’ fashion, and a homely drooping mus- 
tache. Another “bounder,” thought Isabelle, one of the 
hungry outsiders, not in fee to the corporations, who hired 
only the best lawyers. Perhaps he was aware of his position 
there in the dingy court-room before the trained gladiators 
of his profession — and also before his country! The lawyers 
for the defendants lolling in their chairs settled themselves 
placidly to see what this humble brother would make of the 
business. Mr. Brinkerhoff’s eyelids drooped over his gentle 
eyes, as if to shut out all distractions of sense from his brain. 
The thick-set district attorney frequently scraped his throat 
and repeated the phrase, “if it please your honor.” He 
had a detestable nasal whine, and he maltreated the accents of 
several familiar words. The culture of letters and vocal 
delivery had evidently not been large in the small inland 
college where he had been educated. These annoying 
peculiarities at first distracted Isabelle’s attention, while 
the lawyer labored through the opening paragraphs of his 
argument. In the maze of her thoughts, which had 
jumped across the continent to the little mountain village, 
there fell on her ears the words, “In a land of men born 
free and equal before the law.’’ Was it the tone of unex- 
pected passion vibrating through those ancient words, or 
the idea itself that startled her like an electric shock? That 
pathetic effort of our ancestors to enact into constitutional 
‘dogma the peer dream of arace! ‘Born free and equal”’! 

539 


540 TOGETHER 


— there was nothing more absurd, more contrary to the daily 
evidence of life, ever uttered. Isabelle fancied she saw a soft 
smile play over the benign face of Mr. Brinkerhoff, as if he — 
too had been struck by the irony of the words. But to the 
district attorney they did not seem to be a mere poetic 
aspiration, nor a catch phrase with which to adorn his 
speech; they voiced a real idea, still pulsating with passion- 
ate truth. From this moment Isabelle forgot the lawyer’s 
nasal intonation, his uncultivated delivery. 

He stood there, so it seemed, as the representative of the 
mute millions which make the nation to defend before the 
court their cause against the rapacious acts of the strong. 
This great railroad corporation, with its capital of three hun- 
dred and seventy-five millions of dollars in stocks and bonds 
(a creature, nevertheless, of the common public, called into 
existence by its necessities and chartered by its will), had 
taken upon itself to say who should dig coal and sell it from 
the lands along its lines. They and their servants and allies 
had, so the charge ran, seized each individual man or associa- 
tion of men not allied to them, and throttled the life in them 
— specifically refusing them cars in which to transport their 
coal, denying them switching privileges, etc. ... The govern- 
ment, following its duty to protect the rights of each man and 
all men against the oppression of the few, had brought this 
suit to prohibit these secret practices, to compel restitution, 
to punish the corporation and its servants for wrong done. 
: “The situation was, if your honor please, as if a company 
of men should rivet a chain across the doors of certain ware- 
houses of private citizens and should prevent these citizens 
from taking their goods out of their warehouses or compel 
them to pay toll for the privilege of transacting their lawful 
business. .. . And the government has shown, if it please 
your honor, that this Pleasant Valley Coal Company is but a 
creature of the defendant corporation, its officers and owners 
being the servants of the railroad company, and thereby 
this Pleasant Valley Coal Company has enjoyed and now 
enjoys special privileges in the matter of transportation, 


TOGETHER 541 


cars, and switching facilities. The government has further 
shown that the Atlantic and Pacific, by its servant, John 
Lane, .. .” 

At this point the railroad counsel looked interested; even 
the serene Mr. Brinkerhoff deigned to unclose his eyes. For 
the district attorney, having disposed of his oratorical flourish 
of trumpets, had got down to the facts of the record and what 
they could be made to prove. In the close argument that 
followed, Isabelle’s thoughts went back to that trumpet 
phrase, — “all men born free and equal.’’ Slowly there 
dawned in her an altogether new comprehension of what 
this struggle before her eyes, in which her husband was in- 
volved, meant. Nay, what human life itself, with all its 
noisy discord, meant! 

Their forerunners, the fathers of the people, held the theory 
that here at last, in this broad, rich, new land, men should 
struggle with one another for the goods of life on an equal 
basis. Man should neither oppress nor interfere with man. 
Justice at last to all! The struggle should be ordered by 
law so that men might be free to struggle and equal in their 
rights. ‘To all the same freedom to live, to enjoy, to become! 
So these fathers of the republic had dreamed. So some still 
dreamed that human life might be ordered, to be a fair, open 
struggle —for all. 

But within a brief century and a quarter the fallacy of this 
aspiration had become ridiculously apparent. “Born free 
and equal!’”’ Nothing on this globe was ever so born. The 
strong who achieved, the weak who succumbed — both knew 
the nonsense of it. Free and equal, — so far as men could 
maintain freedom and equality by their own force, — that 
was all! 

(There was that man who begged John to give him cars. 
Poor thing! he could not maintain his right.) 

And every man who complained at the oppression of 
another either oppressed some one or would so oppress him, 
if he had the chance and the power. It was, of course, the 
business of the law to police the fight, — the game had its 


542 TOGETHER 


rules, its limits, which all must obey, when not too “de- 
structive.” But essentially this new land of liberty and 
hope was like all other human societies, — a mortal combat 
where the strong triumphed and the weak went under in 
defeat. . . . That was what the array of brilliant counsel 
employed by the Atlantic and Pacific really represented. 
“Gentlemen, you can’t block us with silly rules. We must 
play this game of life as it was ordered by God it should be 
played when the first protoplasm was evolved. ... And 
really, if it were not for us, would there be any game for you 
little fellows to play?” é 

Egotism, the curse of egotism! This was stark male 
egotism, — the instinct for domination. And defendants 
and plaintiffs were alike in spirit, struggling for position 
in the game. The weaker ones —if they had the hold — 
would pluck at the windpipe of their oppressors. . . . 

So while the attorney for the people spoke on about rate- 
sheets and schedules A and B, and bills of lading from the 
Pleasant Valley Company (marked “exhibits nine and ten”’), 
the woman in the court-room began to comprehend dimly the 
mystery behind this veil of words. [very man felt instinc- 
tively this spirit of fight, —the lively young clerk at her side as 
well as the defendant before the bar, her husband; the 
paid writers for Mr. Gossom’s patriotic magazine as well as 
the President and his advisers, — all had it in their blood. 
It was the spirit of our dominating race, fostered through the 
centuries, — the spirit of achievement, of conquest. Mr. 
Gossom’s clever writers, the President, and the “good ele- 
ment’’ generally, differed from their opponents only in 
manner and degree. “Gently, gently, gentlemen,” they 
called. “Play according to the rules of the game. Don’t 
bang all the breath out of your adversary’s body when you 
have him by the throat. Remember, gentlemen, to give 
every one his turn!”’ 

In the light of this understanding of the nature of the 
game of life, the efforts of the government to preserve order in 
a row of this magnitude became almost farcical, — so long 


TOGETHER 543 


as the spirit of man was untouched and SuccrEss was ad- 
mittedly the one glorious prize of life! ... 

Finally the district attorney ceased to speak, and the judge 
looked at his watch. There was not time for the defence to 
make its argument to-day, and so court was adjourned. The 
lawyers stretched themselves, chatted, and laughed. The 
raw district attorney had done his worst, and judging from 
Mr. Brinkerhoff’s amiable smile, it was not very bad. The 
newspaper men scurried out of the room for the elevators, — 
there was good copy this afternoon! 

Lane joined his wife after a few moments, and they left 
the court-room. 

“Are you tired?” he asked solicitously. “It must have 
been dull for you, all that law talk.” 

“Oh, no! ... Ithink I was never so much interested in 
anything in my life,’”’ she replied with a long sigh. 

He looked as if he were puzzled, but he made no further 
reference to the trial, either then or on their way to her 
mother’s house. And Isabelle in a tumult of impressions 
and feelings was afraid to speak yet, afraid lest she might 
touch the wrong nerve, strike the wrong note, — and so 
set them farther apart in life than they were now. 


CHAPTER LXXII 


Tuery dined in the lofty, sombre room at the rear of the 
house, overlooking a patch of turf between the house and 
the stable. Above the massive sideboard hung an oil, 
portrait of the Colonel, a youthful painting but vigorous, 
where something of the old man’s sweetness and gentle 
wisdom had been caught. This dining room had been done 
over the year before Isabelle was married; its taste seemed 
already heavy and bad. 

Her mother’s old servants served the same rich, substantial 
meal they had served when she was:a child, with some poor 
sherry, the Colonel’s only concession to domestic conviviality. 
The room and the food subtly typified the spirit of the race, — 
that spirit which was illuminated in the court-room — before 
it had finally evolved... . The moral physiology of men 
is yet to be explored! 

Lane leaned back in the Colonel’s high-backed chair, gray 
and weary under the brilliant light. At first he tried to be 
interested in Grosvenor, asked questions of his wife, but soon 
he relapsed into a preoccupied silence. This mood Isabelle 
had never seen in her husband, nor his physical lassitude. 
After a time she ventured to ask: — 

“Ts it likely to last much longer, the trial?” 

‘““A couple of days, the lawyers think.’”’ And after a while 
he added morosely: “Nobody can tell how long if it is 
appealed. ... Ihave had to muddle away the better part 
of the winter over this business, first and last! It’s nothing 
but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing 
to the gallery. I don’t know what the devil will happen 
to the country with this lunatic of a President. Capital is 
already freezing up tight. The road will have to issue short- 
time notes to finance the improvements it has under way, — 

544 


TOGETHER 545 


. and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest 


aren’t going to buy stock and bonds with a set of anarchists 
at Washington running the country !”’ :! 

It was quite unlike Lane to explode in this manner. It 
was not merely the result of nervous fatigue, Isabelle felt: 
it indicated some concealed sore in her husband’s mind. 

“How do you think it will be decided ?”’ she asked timidly. 

“The trial? Nobody can guess. The judgeis apparently 


against us, and that will influence the jurors,— a lot of 


farmers and sore-heads! ... But the verdict will make no 
difference. We shall carry it up, fight it out till the last 
court. ‘The government has given us enough errors, —all the 
opening we need !”’ 

The government had played badly, that is. Isabelle had 
it on her tongue to demand: “ But how do you feel about 
it, — the real matter at issue? What is right — just ?”’? Again 
she refrained, afraid to array herself apparently on the side of 


_ his enemies. 


“Tt is all this infernal agitation, which does nobody any 


good and will result in crippling business,’’ he repeated, as 


they went to the library for their coffee. 

This room, where the Colonel usually sat evenings with his 
wife and the neighbors who dropped in, was exactly as it had 
been in the old days, —even the same row of novelsand books 
of travel in a rack on the polished table. Only the magazines 
had been changed. 

Lane lizhted a cigar and sipped his coffee. Revived by his 
dinner and cigar, he began to talk more freely, in the same 
mood of disgusted irritation, the mood of his class these days, 
of the men he met at his club, in business, — the lawyers, the 
capitalists, the leaders of society. Isabelle, listening to his 
bitter criticism, wished that she might get him to speak more 
personally, — tell her all the detail that had led up to the 
suit, explain his connection with it, — show her his inmost 
heart as he would show it to himself in a time of exact 
truth! With this feeling she went over to where he was 
sitting and put her hand on his shoulder, and as he glanced 

2N 


546 | TOGETHER 


up in surprise at this unexpected demonstration, she said 
impulsively : — 

“John, please, John! ... Tell me everything —I can 
understand. . . . Don’t you think there might be some little 
truth in the other side? Was the road fair, was it just in this 
coal business? I so want to know, John!” 

Her voice trembled with suppressed emotion. She wished 
to draw him to her, in the warmth of her new feeling to melt 
his stern antagonism, his harsh mood. But as he looked 
inquiringly at her — weighing as it were the meaning of this 
sudden interest in his affairs — the wife realized how far 
apart she was from her husband. The physical separation 
of all these years, the emotional separation, the intellectual 
separation had resulted in placing them in two distinct 
spheres spiritually. The intervening space could not be 
bridged in a moment of expansive emotion. It would be a 
slow matter, if it ever could be accomplished, to break the 
crust that had formed like ice between their souls. Isabelle 
went back to her seat and drank her coffee. 

“T don’t know what you mean by fair and just,” he replied 
coldly. “ Business has to be done according to its own rules, 
not as idealists or reformers would have it done. The rail- 
road has done nothing worse than every big business is com- 
pelled to do to live, — has made a profit where there was one 
to make. . .. This would be a poor sort of country, even 
for the reformers and agitators, if the men who have the 
power to make money should be bound hand and foot by 
visionaries and talkers. You can’t get the sort of men capa- 
ble of doing things on a large scale to go into business for 
clerk’s wages. They must see a profit —and a big one, — 
and the men who aren’t worth anything wiil always envy 
vuhem. That’s the root of the whole matter.” 

It would be useless, Isabelle saw, to point out that his 
defence was general, and an evasion of the point she wished to 
see clearly, — what the real fact with him was. His mind was 
stiffened by the prejudices of his profession, tempered in 
fierce fires of industrial competition as a result of twenty 


TOGETHER 547 


years of triumphant struggle with men in the life and death 
grapple of business. He was strong just because he was 
narrow and blind. If he had been able to doubt, even a 
little, the basis of his actions, he would never have become 
the third vice-president of the Atlantic and Pacific, one of the 
most promising of the younger men in his profession. 

Recognizing her defeat, Isabelle asked about the Johnstons. 

“T have seen Steve a couple of times,’’ Lane replied. “I 
meant to write you, but hadn’t the time. Steve didn’t make 
good in that lumber business. Those men he went in with, 
it looks to me, were sharks. They took all his money away, 
—every cent. You know they mortgaged the house, too. 
Then the company failed; he was thrown out. Steve was 
not sharp enough for them, I guess.” ; 

“Tsn’t that too bad!” 

“ Just what might have been expected,’’ Lane commented, 
associating Steve Johnston’s failure with his previous train 
of thought; “I told him so when he gave up railroading. He 
was not an all-round man. He had one talent — a good 
one — and he knew the business he was trained in. But it 
wasn’t good enough for him. He must get out and try it 
alone —”’ 

“Tt wasn’t to make more money,” Isabelle protested, re- 
membering the day at the Farm when the two men had 
walked back and forth, delaying luncheon, while they 
heatedly discussed Steve’s determination to change his 
business. 

“He had this reform virus in his system, too! .. . Well, 
he is bookkeeper, now, for some little down-town concern 
at eighteen hundred a year. All he can get these days. 
The railroads are discharging men all the time. He might 
be earning six thousand in the position I offered him then. 
Do you think Alice and the boys will be any better off for his 
scruples? Or the country?” 

“Poor Alice! ... Are they still living in the house at 
Bryn Mawr?” 

“Yes, I believe so. But Steve told me he couldn’t carry 


548 TOGETHER 


the mortgage after the first of the year, — would have to 
give up the house.”’ 

“T must go out there to-morrow,” she said quickly; and 
after a time she added, “ Don’t you think we could do some- 
thing for them, John?” 

Lane smiled, as if the suggestion had its touch of irony. 

“Why, yes! I mean to look into his affairs when I 
can find the time. ... I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Oh, that is good!” Isabelle exclaimed warmly. It was 
like her husband, prompt generosity to a friend in trouble. 
And this matter brought husband and wife closer i in feeling 
than they had been since her arrival. 

“Ready money is a pretty scarce commodity,” Lane re- 
marked ; “but I will see what can be done about his mort- 
gage.” 

It was not easy, he wished his wife to know, evel for the 
strong to be generous these days, thanks to the reformers, and 
the “ crazy man in Washington,” with whom he suspected she 
sympathized. 

. They sat in silence after this until he had finished his 
cigar. There were many subjects that must be discussed 
between them, which thrust up their heads like sunken rocks 
in a channel; but both felt their danger. At last Isabelle, 
faint from the excitement of the day, with all its mutations 
of thought and feeling, went to her room. She did not sleep 
for hours, not until long after she heard her husband’s step 
go by the door, and the click of the switches as he turned out 
the electric lights. 

There was much to be done before their marriage could 
be recreated on a living principle. But where the man 
was strong and generous, and the woman was at last awak- 
ened to life, there was no reason to despair. 


CHAPTER LXXIIT 


IsABELLE did not go back to the court-room to listen to 
the remaining arguments, not even to hear Mr. Brinker- 
hoff’s learned and ingenious plea in behalf of the rights of 
capital, the sacred privileges of property. She felt that 
John would rather not have her there. But Isabelle read 
every word of the newspaper report of the trial, which since 
the district attorney’s impassioned and powerful plea had 
excited even greater public interest than before. Not only 
locally, but throughout the country, the trial of the People 
vs. the Atlantic and Pacific et al. was recognized as the first 
serious effort of the reform administration to enforce the 
laws against capital, by convicting not merely the irrespon- 
sible agents but also some of the men “higher up.” It 
was John Lane’s position in the railroad that gave these 
“coal cases’’ their significance. 

Isabelle read the report of the trial with thoughtful care, 
but much of it was too technical for her untrained mind 
to grasp. All these arguments about admitting certain 
ledgers in evidence, all. these exceptions to the rulings 
of the court, the dodges, fences, pitfalls, the dust created 
by the skilled counsel for the defence, confused her. What 
she gathered in a general way was that the road was fighting 
its case on technicalities, seeking to throw the suit out of 
court, without letting the one real matter at issue appear, 
—had they dealt illegally and unjustly with the public? 
To her emotional temperament this eminently modern 
method of tactics was irritating and prejudiced her against 
her husband’s side. “But I don’t understand,” she re- 
flected sadly, “so John would say. And they don’t seem 
to want people to understand!” 

With these thoughts on her mind, she took the cars to 

549 


550 TOGETHER 


the little suburb north of the city, where the Johnstons lived. 
Bryn Mawr was one of the newer landscape-gardened of 
our city suburbs, with curving roads, grass-plots, an art 
nouveaurailroad station, shrubs and poplar sticks set out along 
the cement sidewalks, in an effort to disguise the rawness 
of the prairie pancake that the contractors had parcelled 
into lots. Isabelle found some difficulty in tracing her way 
along the ingeniously twisted avenues to the Johnston house. 
But finally she reached the two-story-and-attic wooden 
box, which was set in a little grove of maple trees. Two 
other houses were going up across the street, and a trench 
for a new sewer had been opened obstructively.: At this 
period of belated spring Bryn Mawr was not a charming 
spot. Unfinished edges left by the landscape gardener and 
the contractor showed pitilessly against the leafless, scrubby 
trees and the rolling muddy fields beyond. It was all cov- 
ered with a chill mist. In the days when she lived in St. 
Louis she had never found time to go so far to see Alice, 
and she had shared Bessie’s horror of the remote and cheer- 
less existence in this suburb, had wondered how an intelli- 
gent and well-bred woman like Alice Johnston could endure 
its dull level of platitudinous existence. But now as she 
picked her way across the sewer excavation, she felt that 
the little wooden box ahead of her was home for this family, 
—they must not lose that! Place and circumstance had 
lessened in her estimates of life. 

Alice opened the door herself, and with a radiant smile 
of hungry delight enveloped Isabelle in her arms. 

‘Where did you drop from, Belle ?”’ 

“Oh, I thought I’d come on,’ Isabelle replied vaguely, 
not liking to mention the trial. 

“And you found your way out here, and navigated that 
ewer safely! The boys find it surpassingly attractive, — 
as a coal mine, or a canal in Mars, or the Panama ditch. 
I’ve tried to induce Mr. Jorgesson, the contractor, to hang 
out a lantern or two at night. But he evidently thinks well 
of the caution and sobriety of the Johnston family and 


TOGETHER 551 


prefers to take his chances of a suit for damages. So far 
the family has escaped.” 

Alice’s face showed two girlish dimples, while she talked 
glibly,—too glibly, Isabelle thought. They went into the 
dining room where there was a tiny coal fire before which 
Alice had been sewing. Isabelle’s namesake — number 
two in the list — having been considered by her aunt, was 
dismissed on an errand. The older boys were at school, 
the baby out in the kitchen “with the colored lady who 
assists,’’ as Alice explained. 

When they were alone, the cousins looked at each other, 
each thinking of the changes, the traces of life in the other. 
Isabelle held out her hands yearningly, and Alice, under- 
standing that she knew what had befallen them, smiled 
with trembling lips. Yet it was long before she could speak 
of their misfortune in her usual calm manner. 

... “The worst is that we have had to take Ned out 
of the technical institute and send him back to the school 
here with Jack. It isn’t a good school. But we may move 
into the city in the fall... . And Belle had to give up her 
music. We all have to chip in, you see!”’ 

“She mustn’t give up her music. I shall send her,” 
Isabelle said quickly, reflecting whimsically how she had 
loathed her own music lessons. Alice flushed, and after 
a moment’s pause said deliberately : — 

“Do you really mean that, Isabelle?” 

“Of course! I only hope she will get more out of it than 
I did.” 

“T should be glad to accept your offer for her sake. . . . 
I want her to have something, some interest. A poor girl 
without that, —it is worse for her than for the boys!” 

Isabelle could see Alice’s struggle with her pride, and 
understood the importance of this little matter to her, 
which had made her deliberately clutch at the chance for the 
little girl. 

“Belle shall come to me to-morrow and spend the day. 
I will send for the teacher. ... Now that’s settled, and, 


552 TOGETHER 


Alice, you and Steve will be better off soon! He is too able 
a man — ” 

Alice shook her head steadily, saying: — | 

“T am afraid not, Belle! Steve is too good a man, that 
is the trouble. I don’t say this to him. I wouldn’t take 
a particle of hope from him. But I know Steve all through: 
he isn’t the kind to impress people, to get on,—and he 
is no longer young.” 

“Tt is such a pity he left the railroad,’ Isabelle mused. 
“John says they are turning men off instead of taking 
them on, or he might have found a position for him.” 

“Never!” Alice’s eyes flamed. “If it had to be done 
over, even now, we should do the same thing. ... Steve 
is slow and quiet, never says much, but he does a lot of 
thinking. And when he makes up his mind, he sticks. . . . 
When he saw what it meant to take that position in the 
traffic department, what he would have to know and do, 
he couldn’t do it. It is useless trying to make a man like 
Steve live contrary to his nature. You can’t bend a big, 
thick tree any way you want it.” 

“But, Alice, he might have been wrong!” Isabelle pro- 
tested, coloring. - 

“Yes, —he might have been wrong,” Alice admitted, 
her eyes falling. “But Steve couldn’t see it any other way. 
So he had to do as he did. . . . And the lumber business 
failed. I was afraid it would! Dear Steve! He wasn’t 
fitted to fight with those men, to see that they didn’t cheat 
him.” | 

It was later that Alice uttered the deep cry of her heart. 

... “Don’t think, Belle, that I mind the hard times, 
the work and all; not even the school for Ned, and the poor 
prospect for the children. After all, they may do as well 
without the advantages we could have given them. But 
what breaks my heart is to see Steve, who is bigger and > 
abler and stronger than most men, go down to the bottom 
of the ladder and have to take his orders from an ignorant 
little German. It’s small of me, I know, and Steve 


TOGETHER 553 


doesn’t complain. But it seems to me terribly unjust 
somehow.” 

For a moment her feeling overcame her; then she recov- 
ered her composure and continued: “ But then, it’s Steve! 
And I wouldn’t have him a particle different, not for all 
the success in the world. You see I have my pride, my 
snobbery. I am a snob about my husband.” 

The boys came in from school, and the house shook with 
racketing children. 

“They don’t know what has happened, really, — they 
are too young, thank Heaven!” Alice exclaimed. “And 
I don’t mean they ever shall know — ever think they are 
poor.” 

The two stood on the porch for a last word, arranging 
for the little girl’s visit to Isabelle on the morrow. The 
twilight had descended through the mist. 

“See!” Alice said, pointing to the white tree trunks 
across the street, and the vague fields beyond. “Isn’t it 
very much like that Corot the Colonel used to love so much, 
—the one in the library? We have our Corot, too... . 
Good-by, dear! Ihave chattered frightfully about ourselves. 
Some day you must tell me of your stay with Mrs. Pole and 
of yourself.” 

“There isn’t much to tell!” 

Alice Johnston, watching her cousin’s agreeable figure 
disappear into the mist, felt that if with Isabelle there 
might be not much to tell, at least a great deal had happened 
these last months. 

And Isabelle, picking her way cautiously along the sewer 
excavation, was thinking of the home behind. The couple 
of hours she had spent with Alice had been filled with a 
comprehension, a curiously immediate grasp of the other 
person’s vision of life, — what it all meant to her, — Alice’s 
disappointment, her pride in her defeated husband. For 
the first time in all the years she had known them, Steve 
and Alice and the children seemed quite real persons, and 
their life as vivid, as interesting to her, as her own. 


554 TOGETHER 


Sad as their little story was, in its pathetic limitations 
of plans and hopes, it did not seem to her intolerable, 
or sordid, or depressing, as it once would have seemed. 
Just as she possessed somewhere in herself a new strength 
to endure whatever misfortune might come to her, so she 
had an instinctive feeling of how others endured what on 
the surface of events seemed merely distressing and dis- 
agreeable. And the Johnston house, plain and homely as 
it was, with all the noisy children, had an air of peace 
about it, the spirit of those that dwelt there, which Isabelle 


felt to be the most precious thing on earth. ... Alice 
had said, “It’s Steve — and I wouldn’t have him differ- 
ent for all the success in the world!’’ The words stung 


Isabelle. Such was marriage, — perfect marriage,—to be 
able to say that in the face of worldly defeat. Neither she 
nor John could ever say that about the other. 


CHAPTER LXXIV 


THE newsboys were crying the verdict up and down the 
wet street. Across the front page of the penny sheet which 
Isabelle bought ran in broad, splotched letters: GumILty; 
RAILROAD GRAFTERS FINED; and in slightly smaller type: 
Atlantic and Pacific found guilty of illegal discrimination 
in famous coal cases — Fined eighty-five thousand dollars. 
Vice-president Lane, General Traffic Manager of Road, fined 
thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty dollars, ete. Isa- 
belle crumpled the paper into her muff and hurried home. 
As she walked numbly, she thought, ‘Why six hundred and 
eighty dollars? why so exact?’ As if the precise measure of 
wrong could be determined! On the doorstep of her mother’s 
house lay the quietly printed, respectable two-cent evening 
paper that the family had always read. Isabelle took this 
also with her to her room. Even in this conservative sheet, 
favorable to the interests of the property classes, there 
were scare-heads about the verdict. It was of prime impor- 
tance as news. Without removing her hat or coat, Isabelle 
read it all through, — the judge’s charge to the jury, the ver- 
dict, the reporters’ gossip of the court-room. The language 
of the judge was trenchant, and though his charge was 
worded in stiff and solemn form and laden with legal phrases, 
Isabelle understood it better even than the hot eloquence 
of the district attorney. It swept away all that legal dust, 
those technical quibbles, which Mr. Brinkerhoff and his asso- 
ciate counsel had so industriously sprinkled over the issue. 
“Tf the facts have been established of such and such a nature, 
beyond reasonable doubt; if the connection of the defendant 
has-been clearly set forth,” etc. As the penny sheet put it, 
“Judge Barstow’s charge left no room for doubt as to the 
verdict. The jury was out forty minutes and took one 


555 


556 TOGETHER 


ballot.”?” Twelve men, be they farmers or “sore-heads,”’ 
had found John Lane guilty of something very like grand 
larceny. The case was to be appealed — of course. 

Even the respectable two-cent paper delivered itself 
editorially on the verdict in the famous coal cases, with 
unusual daring. For the Post was ordinarily most cau- 
tious not to reflect upon matters inimical to “leading in- 
terests.”’? To-night it was moved beyond the limits of an 
habitual prudence. 

“Judge Barstow,” it said, “in his able analysis left no 
room for doubt as to the gravity of the charges brought by 
the government against the Atlantic and Pacific and certain 
of its officers. The verdict will be no surprise to those who 
have followed closely the so-called coal cases through the 
preliminary investigation by the Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission and the recent trial. A state of affairs in the man- 
agement of the Atlantic and Pacific railroad was revealed 
that may well shock men long accustomed to the methods 
of corporate control. It was shown that officers and em- 
ployees of the railroad owned or controlled various coal prop- 
erties that depended for their existence upon special favors 
given them by the road, and that these companies were 
enabled by their secret alliance with the railroad.to black- 
mail independent, rival companies, and drive them out of 
existence. ‘To put it in plain words, the Atlantic and Pacific 
favored its secret partners at the expense of their competi- 
tors. ... Apart from the legal aspect so ably dealt with 
by Judge Barstow, the spectacle of graft in the Atlantic 
and Pacific must surprise the stockholders of that corpora- 
tion quite as much as the public at large. Apparently 
high-salaried officials shared in these extra profits together 
with freight clerks and division superintendents! ... We 
cannot believe that the moral sense of the country will long 
tolerate a condition of affairs such as has been revealed in 
the case of Vice-president Lane.” ... 

This was no academic question of economic policy! No 
legal technicality. The paper fell from Isabelle’s hand, and 


TOGETHER 557 


she sat staring at the floor. Her husband was called in 
plain prose a “ grafter,’’ — one who participated in unearned 
and improper profits, due to granting favors in his official 
capacity to himself. 

As Isabelle closed the old-fashioned shutters before 
dressing for dinner, she saw her husband coming up the 
steps, walking with his slow, powerful stride, his head erect, 
—the competent, high-minded, generous man, a rock of 
stable strength, as she had always believed him, even 
when she loved him least! There must be something wrong 
with the universe when this man, the best type of hard, 
intelligent labor, should have become a public robber! .. . 
Renault’s solemn words repeated themselves, ‘The curse 
of our age, of our country, is its frantic egotism.” The 
predatory instinct, so highly valued in the Anglo-Saxon 
male, had thriven mightily in a country of people “born 
free and equal,’”’ when such a man as John Lane “ grafted”’ 
and believed himself justified. 


Lane stood behind her chair waiting for her in the dining 
room. As she entered the room he glanced at her ques- 
tioningly. He had noticed that the evening paper was not 
in its usual place in the hall. But after that glance he settled 
himself composedly for the meal, and while the servants 
were in the room husband and wife talked of immediate 
plans. He said he should have to go to New York the next 
day, and asked what she wished to do. Would she wait 
here in St. Louis for her mother? Or join her at the 
Springs? Or open the Farm? He should have to be back 
and forth between New York and St. Louis all the spring, 
probably. 

Isabelle could answer only in monosyllables. All these 
details of where she should be seemed irrelevant to the 
one burning point, — what will you do now, in the face of 
this verdict of guilt? At last the meal was over, and they 
were alone. Isabelle, without looking up, said: — 

“IT saw the verdict in the papers, John.” 


558 TOGETHER 


He made no reply, and she cried: — 

“Tell me what you are going to do! We must talk about 
it.” 

“The case will be appealed, as I told you before.” 

“Yes! ... but the fine, the — ”’ 

She stopped for lack of the right word. He made a 
gesture of indifference at the word “fine,” but still waited. 

“ John, is it true what the judge said, what the district 
attorney said, about — the officials getting money from 
those coal companies ?”’ 

She colored, while Lane eyed her and at ak replied 
iritably : — 

“The officers of the road invested their money, like most 
men, where they saw fit, I suppose.’ 

“But does that mean they take advantage of their posi- 
tion with the road to make money — improperly?” 

“That depends on what you call ‘improperly.’ ” 

Her mind leaped clear of this evasion; she cried out: — 

“But why did you want to make money —so much 
money? You had a large salary, and I could have had all 
the money we wanted from my father!” 

Her husband looked at her almost contemptuously, as 
if her remark was too childish for serious consideration. 
It was axiomatic that all men who had the power desired 
to make what money they could. | 

‘“T certainly never cared to live on your father’s money,” 
he retorted. 

“ But we didn’t need so much — ” 

“T wonder if you realize just how much we have seemed to 
need in one way or another since we moved East?” 

There it was staring her in the face, her share in the respon- 
sibility for this situation! She had known only vaguely 
- what they were spending, and always considered that com- 
pared with women of her class she was not extravagant, in 
fact economical, 

“But, John, if I had only known — ”’ 

“Known what?’ he demanded harshly. “Known that 


TOGETHER — 559 


I was making money in stocks and bonds, like other men, 
like your father’s friend, Senator Thomas, like Morton, and 
Beals himself? Isabelle, you seem to have the compre- 
hension of a child! ... Do you think that such men 
live on salaries ?”’ 

“ But why weren’t the others indicted and tried?” 

He hesitated a moment, his face flushing, and then there 
burst out the truth. She had unwittingly touched the sore 
spot in his mind. | 

“Because there had to be some sort of scapegoat to 
satisfy public clamor! The deals went through my office 
mostly; but the road is behind me, of course. ... They 
all shared, from Beals down.”’ 

At last they were at the heart of the matter, he chal- 
lenging her criticism, she frightened at the cloudy places in 
her husband’s soul that she had penetrated, when a servant 
interrupted them, saying that Lane was wanted at the tele- 
phone. While he was out of the room, Isabelle thought 
swiftly. What would be the next word? Was it not 
better to accept his excuse? ‘They have all done as 
I have done, men who are honored and respected. It is 
universal, what we do, and it is only an accident that I am 
put up as a target for public abuse!’”’ If she persisted in 
knowing all, she would merely divide herself farther from 
her husband, who would resent her attitude. And what 
right had she to examine and judge, when for all these 
years she had gone her way and let him go his? 

The blood beat in her ears, and she was still uncertain 
when Lane returned. His face had lost its color of passion, 
and his voice was subdued as he said: — 

“Steve has met with an accident, — a serious one.”’ 

“Steve!” Isabelle cried. 

“Yes; I think we had better go out there at once. Alice 
got some one to telephone for her.”’ 

The account of the accident had been in that late edition of 
' the penny paper which Isabelle had seen, but it had been 
crowded into the second page by the magnitude of the Atlan- 


560 TOGETHER 


tic and Pacific sensation. Lane bought the papers, and they 
read them on their way to Bryn Mawr. Johnston had been 
run down as he was going to the station early that Saturday 
afternoon. It was a heavy motor, running at reduced yet 
lively speed through the crowded city street. A woman with 
a child by the hand had stepped from the sidewalk to hail an 
approaching street-car, without noticing the automobile that 
- was bearing down behind her. Steve had seen their danger, 
rushed for the woman and pulled her and the child out of 
the way, — got them clear of the motor. ' But he was struck, 
a glancing blow in the back, as the motor sheered off. He 
had been taken to a drug-store, and reviving quickly had 
insisted on going home. The driver of the car, apparently 
a humane person, had waited with a notable display of 
decency and taken the injured man with the doctor who 
had attended him at the drug-store to Bryn Mawr... . 
The reporter for the penny paper had done his best by the 
accident, describing the thrilling rescue of the woman and 
child, the unavoidable blow to the rescuer, with all the vivid- 
ness of his art. 

“Tt was a brave act,’’ Lane remarked, folding up the sheet 
and putting it in his pocket... . 

As soon as they entered, Alice came down to them from the 
sick room. ‘ She was pale, but she seemed to Isabelle wonder- 
fully composed and calm, — the steady balance-wheel of 
the situation. When Steve had first reached home, he 
had apparently not been badly off, she told them. He 
had insisted on walking upstairs and said that he would 
be quite right after he had laid down a little while. So 
the doctor went back to the city in the motor. But at 
dinner time, Alice, going into his room, found him breathing 
heavily, almost unconscious, and his voice had become so — 
thick that she could scarcely make out what he was saying. 
She had summoned their'own doctor, and he had called 
another from the city. They feared cerebral trouble, due 
to a lesion of the spinal chord; but nothing could be 
certainly determined yet. | 


TOGETHER | 561 


‘Something seems to be on his mind,”’ Alice said in con- 
clusion. “I thought I made out your name, John; so 
I had you telephoned for. I don’t know that it will do any 
good, but it may quiet him to see you.” 

While Lane was upstairs, Alice talked on in the composed, 
capable, self-contained manner that she usually had, — 
merely speaking a trifle faster, with occasional pauses, as if 
she were listening for a sound from Steve’s room. But the 
house was painfully still. 

... “You see,’ she explained, ‘Steve doesn’t move 
quickly, —is too heavy and slow. I suppose that was why 
he didn’t succeed in getting out of the way himself. The 
car wasn’t really going fast, not over eight miles an hour, 
the chauffeur said. ... But Steve saved the woman and 
child, — they would have been killed.” 

He had saved the woman and child, — chance strangers in 
the street, — possibly at the cost of his life or the use of his 
limbs. There was an ironical note in the tragedy. This 
stout man with the character in his slow organism that 
could accomplish great things— this hero of Alice’s — 
had stepped off the sidewalk to save the life of a careless 
passer-by, and risked his own life, the happiness of his wife 
and children, in just that little way. 

“Tt was so like Steve, — to realize but one point, their dan- 
ger,” Alice continued with a proud smile. And Isabelle could 
see the dull, large-framed man, his head slightly bent, plod- 
_ ding forward in the stream of home-goers on the pavement, 
suddenly lift his head, and without a moment’s hesitation 
step out into the path of danger... . 

When isabelle and John left the house late in the evening, 
he said gravely, ‘““The doctors don’t think there is ariel 
chance for him.” 

“Fie will die!’ Isabelle gasped, thinking of Alice, who 
had smiled at them cheerily when they went out of the 
door. 

“Perhaps worse than that, — complete paralysis, — the 
lower limbs are paralyzed now.” 

20 


562 TOGETHER 


“How perfectly awful !’’ 

“YT think he knew me. He grasped my hand so hard it 
hurt, and I could make out my name. But I couldn’t 
understand what he was trying to say.”’ 

“Do you suppose it could be the mortgage?” 

“Very likely. I must attend to that matter at once.” 

They were silent on the way back to the city, each buried 
in thought. The verdict, which had stirred them so deeply 
a few hours before, had already sunk into the background of 
life, overshadowed by this nearer, more human catastrophe. 

“T shall have to go on to New York to-morrow, for a few 
days at least,’’ Lane said as they entered the house. 

‘““T will stay here, of course,”’ Isabelle replied, “and you 
can bring Molly and the governess back with you. I will 
telegraph them.” It was all easily decided, what had seemed 
perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had been 
occupied merely with herself and John. ‘I can be of some 
help to Alice any way, and if he should die — ” 

““Yes,”’? Lane agreed. ‘That is best. I will be back 
in a week.’’ And he added casually, announcing a decision 
arrived at on the way to the city: — 

“T’ll have my lawyer look up that mortgage. You 
can tell Alice to-morrow and try to get Steve to understand, 
so that he will have it off his mind as soon as possible.” 

Her heart responded with a glow. Yes, that was the 
very thing to do! She had money enough to help them, 
but she did not know just what to do. It was like John, 
this sure, quick way of seeing the one thing to be done 
immediately and doing it. It was like him, too, to do gen- 
erous things. How many poor boys and young men he 
had helped along rough roads in their struggle up, — given 
them the coveted chance in one way and another, without 
ostentation or theory, simply in the human desire to help 
~ another with that surplus strength which had given him 
his position of vantage. 

‘““T will write the note to Mather now, telling him what 
to do about the mortgage,’ he continued in his methodical, 


TOGETHER 563 


undemonstrative manner. As he sat down at the desk and 
drew pen and paper towards him, he paused a moment. 
“You will see to the nurses, — they should have two. The 
doctors may decide on an operation. Have the best men, 
of course.” i 

He struck pen into the paper with his broad, firm stroke. 
Isabelle stood watching him, her heart beating strangely, 
and suddenly leaning over him she kissed his forehead, 
then fled swiftly to the door. 


CHAPTER LXXV 


ISABELLE waited in the carriage outside the station for 
her husband and Molly. The New York train was late as 
usual. She had driven in from Bryn Mawr, where she had 
spent most of the ten days since Lane’s departure. She 
was steeped now in the atmosphere of that suburban house 
covered by the April mist, with the swelling bushes and trees 
all about it. There had been an operation, decided on after 
consultation with the eminent surgeons that Isabelle had 
summoned. After the operation hope had flickered up, 
as the sick man breathed more easily, was able to articu- 
late a few intelligible words, and showed an interest in what 
was going on about him. But it had waned again to-day, and 
when Isabelleleft, Alice was holding her husband’s large hand, 
talking to him cheerfully, but there was no response. .. . 
How wonderful she was,— Alice! That picture of her filled 
Isabelle’s thought as she waited in the carriage. Never a 
tear or a whimper all these anxious days, always the calm, 
buoyant voice, even a serene smile and little joke at her 
husband’s bedside, such as she had used to enliven him with, 
—anything to relax his set, heavy features. “ How she 
loves him!”’ thought Isabelle, almost with pain. 

When she left that afternoon, Alice had sent a grateful 
message to John. ‘“‘ He will come out to-morrow if he can?’ 
she had asked. She knew now that the hours were num- 
bered without being told so by the doctors. And never a 
tear, a self-pitying cry! Oh, to be like that, — sturdy in 
heart and soul, — with that courage before life, that serene 
confidence in face of the worst fate can offer! Alice was 
of the faith of Renault. of 

Lane came down the platform, followed by Molly and her 

564 


TOGETHER 565 


governess. As he raised his hat in greeting, Isabelle noticed 
the deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and the line above 
his broad, straight nose. When they were in the carriage, 
she realized that her husband had been living these ten 
days in another world from the one she had inhabited, and 
in spite of his questions about Steve and Alice, he was pre- 
occupied, still held by the anxieties and perplexities of his 
business in New York, still in the close grip of his own affairs, 
his personal struggle. So she talked with Molly, who was 
almost articulately joyful over her escape from the country, 
at the sight of streets and motor carriages. 

As they were going to dinner a servant brought word 
that a reporter wished to speak to John. Usually Lane 
refused to see reporters outside his office, and there turned 
them over to his secretary, who was skilled in the 
gentle art of saying inoffensive nothings in many words. 
But to her surprise John after slight hesitation went into 
the library to see the man, and it was a long half hour before 
he returned to his dinner. The evening was another one 
of those torturing periods when Isabelle’s heart was full and 
yet must be carefully repressed lest she make a false step. 
After a little talk about Molly, her mother, the Johnstons, 
Lane turned to open his mail that had been sent up for him 
from the office. Isabelle left him absorbed in this task, 
but she could not sleep, and when at last she heard him go 
to his room, she followed him. Laying her hands on his 
arms, she looked at him pleadingly, longing now not so 
much to know the facts, to reason and judge, as to under- 
stand, perhaps comfort him, — at least to share the trouble 
with him. : 

“Can’t you tell me all about it, John?” 

“ About what?’? he demanded dryly, his dislike of effu- 
Siveness, emotionalism, showing in the glitter of his gray 
eyes. 

“Tell me what is troubling you! I want to share it, — 
all of it. What has happened?” 

He did not answer at once. There was an evident struggle 


566 TOGETHER 


to overcome his habitual reserve, the masculine sense of 
independence in the conduct of his affairs. Also, there was 
between them her prejudice, the woman’s insufficient knowl- 
edge, and the barrier of the long years of aloofness. But 
at last, as if he had reflected that she would have to know 
soon in any case, he said dryly: — 

“The Board has voted to relieve me of my duties as 
general manager of traffic. I am assigned to St. Louis 
for the present, but the duties are not specified. A polite 
hint — which I have taken!’’ 

“Did Mr. Beals do that?” 

‘Beals went to Europe on his vacation when the coal cases 
first came up. ... Besides, it would have made no differ- 
ence. I think I see in it the fine hand of our good friend 
the Senator, — smug-faced old fox!” 3 

Isabelle felt how much this action by the directors had 
stung him, how severely he was suffering. 

“It was ... because of the verdict?” 

‘““Oh, the general mess, the attacks in the press, complaints 
from stockholders! They want to get under cover, show 
the public they are cleaning house, Isuppose. They thought 
to shelve me until the row fizzles out, then drop me. But 
I am not the sort of man to sit around as a willing sacrifice, 
to pose for the papers as a terrible example. They will 
know, to-morrow !”’ 

Isabelle understood why he had consented to see the 
reporter. Hitherto, he had refused to speak, to make any 
public defence of himself or comment on the trial. But 
after this action on the part of the directors, after the long 
smouldering hours on the train, he had decided to speak, — | 
at length. It would not be pleasant reading in certain 
quarters near Wall Street, what he said, but it would make 
good copy. : 

Biting fiercely at his cigar, which had gone out, he struck 
a match sharply and talked on:— 

“T am not a back number yet. There is not another road — 
in the country that has shown such results, such gain in 


% 





TOGETHER 567 


traffic, as the A. and P. since I was put in charge of traffic 
five years ago. ‘There are others who know it, too, in New 
York. JI shan’t have to twiddle my thumbs long when my 
resignation is published. The prejudiced trial out here 
won’t stand in the way.”’ 

In the storm of his mood, it was useless to ask questions. 
Isabelle merely murmured : — 

“Too bad, too bad, — Iam so sorry, John!”’ 

Instead of that dispassionate groping for the exact truth, 
justice between her husband and the public, that she had 
first desired, she was simply compassionate for his hurt 
pride. Innocent or guilty, what right had she to judge 
him? Even if the worst of what had been charged was 
literally true, had she not abandoned him at the start, — 
left him to meet the problems of the modern battle as he . 
could, — to harden his soul against all large and generous 
considerations? Now when he was made the scapegoat for 
the sins of others, for the sin of his race, too, — how could 
she sit and censure! The time would come for calm consid- 
eration between them. There was that something in her 
heart which buoyed her above the present, above the dis- 
tress of public condemnation, — even disgrace and worldly 
failure. Coming close to him again, she said with ringing 
conviction : — 

“Tt can make no difference to you and me, John!”’ 

He failed to see her meaning. 

“The money doesn’t matter,—it isn’t that, of course. 
We shan’t starve!” 

“T didn’t mean the money!” 

“Sensible people know what it amounts to, — only the 
mob yaps.’’ 

“‘T didn’t mean criticism, either,’ she said softly. 

“Well, that New York crowd hasn’t heard the last of me 
yet!” 

His lips shut tight together. The spirit of fight, of 

_Tevenge, was aroused. It was useless to talk further, She 
| drew his arm about her, 


568 TOGETHER 


“You will go out to see Steve to-morrow, won’t you?” 

“Yes, of course, — any time in the afternoon.” 

She kissed him and went back to her room. 

One precept out of Renault’s thin book of life was hard to 
acquire, — Patience. But it must be acquired, — the power 
to abide the time calmly, until the right moment should come. 
The morrows contain so many reversals of the to-days! 


CHAPTER LXXVI 


Ir was probable that the dying man did not recognize 
Lane, though it was hard to say what dim perception entered 
through the glazing eyes and penetrated the clouding brain. 
The children had been about the room all the morning, 
Alice said, and from the way the father clung to Jack’s hand 
she thought there still was recognition. But the sense of 
the outer world was fast fading now. The doctor was there, 
by way of kindly solicitude, — he could do nothing; and 
when the Lanes came he went away, whispering to John as 
he left, ‘‘ Not long now.”’ Alice had sent away the nurse, as she 
had the night before, refusing to lose these last minutes of ser- 
vice. Shetold Isabelle that in the early morning, while she was 
watching and had thought Steve was asleep from his quieter 
breathing, she had found his eyes resting on her with a clear 
look of intelligence, and then kneeling down with her face 
close to his lips he had whispered thickly. Her eyes were 
still shining from those last lover’s words in the night. .. . 

When John went back to the city, Isabelle stayed on, 
taking luncheon with the nurses and little Belle. Neighbors 
came to the door to inquire, to leave flowers. These neigh- 
bors had been very kind, Alice had said often, taking the 
boys to their homes and doing the many little errands of 
the household. ‘‘And I hardly knew them to bow to! 
‘It’s wonderful how people spring up around you with kind- 
ness when trouble comes!” ... 
| Meanwhile, overhead the life was going out, the strong 
man yielding slowly to the inevitable. Twilight came on, 
the doctor returned and went away again, and the house 
became absolutely still. Once Isabelle crept upstairs to the 
door of the sick room. Alice was holding Steve’s head, with 
one arm under his pillow, looking, — looking at him with 

569 


570 TOGETHER 


devouring eyes!... Gradually the breathing grew fainter, 
at longer intervals, the eyelids fell over the vacant eyes, and 
after a little while the nurse, passing Isabelle on the stairs, 
whispered that it was o 
Presently Alice came out of the room, her eyes still shining 
strangely, and smiled at Isabelle. 





When they went out the next afternoon, there was in the 
house that dreary human pause created by the fact of 
death, — pause without rest. Flowers scented the air, and 
people moved about on tiptoe, saying note in hushed 
voices, and trying to be themselves. 

Bats in the dim room above, where Alice took ea there 
was peace and naturalness. The dead man lay very straight 
beneath the sheet, his fleshy body shrunken after its struggle 
to its bony stature. Isabellé had always thought Steve a 
homely man,— phlegmatic and ordinary in feature. She 
had often said, ‘‘How can Alice be so romantic over old 
Steve!’’ But as the dead man lay there, wasted, his face 
seemed to have taken on a grave and austere dignity, an 
expression of resolute will in the heavy jaw, the high brow, 
the broad nostril, as though the steadfast soul within, so 
prosaically muffled in the flesh, had at the last spoken out 
to those nearest him the meaning of his life, graving it on 
his dead face. Lane, caught by this high, commanding note 
of the lifeless features, as of one who, though removed by in- 
finite space, still spoke to the living, gazed steadily at the dead 
man. And Isabelle felt the awe of his presence; here was one 
who could speak with authority of elemental truths. . . 

Alice, her arms resting on the foot-rail of the bed, was 
leaning forward, looking with eyes still shining at her hus- 
band, her lover, her mate. And her lips parted in a little 
smile. Large and strong and beautiful, in the full tide of 
conscious life, she contemplated her dead comrade. | 

A feeling that she was in the presence of mystery —_ 
the mystery of perfect human union — stole through Isal| 
belle. The woman standing there at the feet of her a | 


TOGETHER 571 


man had had it all, — all the experience that woman can 
have. Had she not loved this man, received his passion, 
borne his children, fought by his side the fight of life, —and 
above all and beyond all else cherished in her the soul of 
the man, the sacred part of him, that beauty unknown to 
others hitherto, now written plain for all to see on his face! 
And her lighted eyes seemed to say, ‘ What place is there 
here for grief? Even though I am left in mid life, to strug- 
gle on alone with my children, without his help, yet have 
I not had it all? Enough to warm my heart and soul 
through the empty years that must come!’ . . 

Tears dropped from Isabelle’s eyes, and convulsively she 
grasped the hand that rested beside her, as though she would 
say, ‘To lose all this, what you two Dave had, how can you 
bear it!’ Alice bent down over her tear-stained face and 
kissed her,— with a little gesture towards Steve, murmuring 
““T have had so much!” 


They walked slowly back to the city in the warm April 
night. Neither had spoken since they left the little house, 
until Isabelle said with a deep solemnity : — 

“It was perfect — that !”’ 

“Yes! Steve was a good man, and Alice loved him.” 

Each knew what lay behind these commonplace words in 
the heart of the other. These two, Steve and Alice, in spite 
of hardship, the dull grind of their restricted existence, the 
many children, the disappointments, had had something — 
-a human satisfaction — that they had missed — forever; 
and as they walked on through the deserted streets silently, 
side by side, they saw that now it could never be for them. 
It was something that missed once in its perfection was 
missed for all time. However near they might come to 
be, however close in understanding and effort, they could 
never know the mystery of two who had lived together, 
body and soul, and together had solved life. 

For mere physical fidelity is but a small part of the com- 
radeship of marriage. 


CHAPTER LXXVII 


Miss Marian LANE was such a thorough cosmopolite that 
she had no discernible affection for any place. She referred 
to Central Park, to the Farm, to the Price house in St. 
Louis, to Grosvenor with equal indifference and impartiality, 
as she might later to London or Paris or Rome. She did not 
even ask her mother where they were to spend the summer. 
That there was a Park in St. Louis, as in all properly created 
cities, she had confidence, because she asked Miss Joyce to 
take her there the day after her-arrival. Isabelle’s: own 
childhood had been strongly colored by places, — the old 
house in K Street, this ugly Victorian mansion, and espe- 
cially the Farm. Places had meant so much to her in her 
youth, her feelings reflecting their physical atmosphere, that 
they had been more vivid than persons. But Molly was 
equally content anywhere. She needed merely Miss Joyce, 
a Park, and pretty clothes. . 

Clothes, indeed, were the only subject that aroused a 
semblance of passion in Molly’s sedate soul. ‘Oh, we shall 
go shopping, mamma!’’ she exclaimed with the first real 
animation Isabelle had seen in her, when her grandmother 
remarked that Molly had outgrown all her dresses this winter. 
They were sitting in the large front bedroom that the Colonel 
and his wife had always occupied. Mrs. Price had just 
returned from the Springs, and was already talking of spend- 
ing the summer in Europe. Since the Colonel’s death she 
had become a great globe-trotter, indefatigably whisking 
hither and thither with her reliable maid. It seemed as if 
after all these years of faithful economy and routine living, 
the suppressed restlessness of her race, which had developed 
at an earlier age in Isabelle, was revenging itself upon 

572 


TOGETHER 573 


the old lady. ‘Mother’s travels’? had become a house- 
hold joke. ... 

“Can’t we go to-day? Miss Joyce and I saw some lovely 
things at Roseboro’s, mother!’’ Molly urged, jumping up 
from the lounge, where she had been telling her grand- 
mother about Grosvenor. “Oh, yes, grandmother,”’ Isa- 
belle had heard her say in a listless voice, ‘we had a pleas- 
ant time in Grosvenor. Miss Joyce took me coasting with 
James Pole. And we had sleigh rides. Miss Joyce was 
afraid to drive the horses, so we did not go except when Mrs. 
Pole took us. ... Aunt Margaret was very nice. Miss 
Joyce gave us all dancing lessons.” .. . 

It was always Miss Joyce this and Miss Joyce that, since 

Molly’s return, until Isabelle had impatiently concluded that 
the faithful English governess with her narrow character had 
completely ironed out the personality of her charge. As 
she listened to Molly’s conversation with her grandmother, 
she resolved to get rid of Miss Joyce, in order to escape 
hearing her name if for no other reason. 
_ “T suppose you'll wait to get her clothes until you are back 
in New York,” the practical Mrs. Price observed; “they are 
so much cheaper and more tasteful there. The stores here 
don’t seem to be what they were,—even Roseboro’s 
ean’t compare with Altman’s and Best’s for children’s 
things.” 

“We may not bein New York this spring,” Isabelle replied, 
waking from her meditations on the subject of Miss Joyce 
and her daughter. ‘John’s plans are uncertain — and I 
don’t care to go without him.” 

“You can try Roseboro’s, then; but I don’t believe you 
will be satisfied.”’ 

“Oh, mamma, can’t we go in the motor now!”’ 

And Molly ran to Miss Joyce to dress herself for the expe- 
dition. 

Isabelle had scrutinized her little daughter with fresh 
‘imterest the few days she had been with her. Molly had 
always been an unresponsive child since she was a baby. 


574 TOGETHER 


In spite of her beautiful pink coloring, carefully preserved by 
country life, she was scarcely more alive than an automaton. 
Whatever individuality she had was so deeply buried that her 
mother could not discover it. Why was it? Why was she 
so colorless? She had been “moved about” a good deal, 
like many American children, according to the exigencies of 
the family, —to St. Louis, the Farm, the New York hotel, the 
New York house, Europe, Grosvenor, — a rapid succession 
of panoramas for one small mind to absorb. But Molly had 
never seemed disturbed by it. One place was as good as an- 
other, — one set of children, provided they had nice manners 
and were well dressed, as agreeable as any other. If she were 
put down in a Pasadena hotel, she found playmates, judi- 
ciously selected by Miss Joyce, of course, who supervised their 
games. In all the changes of scene Isabelle had been most 
scrupulous in her care for diet, exercises, régime, and as long 
as the child seemed content and physically well she had seen 
no harm in taking her about from scene to scene. Now 
Isabelle had her doubts. 

The little girl came downstairs, followed by the capable 
Miss Joyce, who was brushing out a fold in her white broad- 
cloth coat and arranging a curl, and looked in at her mother’s 
room, with a pretty little smile and a gesture of the fingers 
she had copied from some child. “All ready, mamma, — 
shall we wait for you in the motor?”’ As she passed on, 
followed by Miss Joyce, — the figure of dainty young plutoc- 
racy and her mentor, — Isabelle murmured, “I wonder if it 
has been good for her to move about so much!” 

Mrs. Price, a literal old lady, took up the remark: — 

“Why, she looks healthy. Miss Joyce takes excellent 
care of her. I think you are very fortunate in Miss Joyce, 
Isabelle.” 

“‘T don’t mean her health, mother !”’ 

“She is as forward as most children of her age, — she 
speaks French very prettily,” the grandmother protested, 
‘She has nice manners, too.” 

Isabelle saw the futility of trying to explain what she meant 


TOGETHER 575 


to her mother, and yet the old lady in her next irrelevant 
remark touched the very heart of the matter. 

“Children have so much attention these days, — what 
they eatand do is watched over every minute. Why, we had a 
cat and a dog, and a doll or two, the kitchen and the barn 
to run about in — and that was all. Parents were too busy 
to fuss about their children. Boys and girls had to fit into 
the home the best they could.” 

There was a home to fit into! A cat and a dog, a few 
dolls, and the kitchen and the barn to run about in, — that 
was more than Molly Lane with all her opportunities had 
ever had. | 

“There weren’t any governesses or nurses; but we saw 
more of our father and mother, naturally,” the old lady con- 
tinued. ‘Only very rich people had nurses in those times.” 

The governess was a modern luxury, provided.to ease the 
conscience of lazy or incompetent mothers, who had “too 
much to do”’ to be with their children. Isabelle knew all 
the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie 
-Falkner’s glib defence of the governess method, when she 
had wanted to stretch Rob’s income another notch for this 
convenience, — ‘‘ If a mother is always with her children, 
she can’t give her best self either to them or to her 
husband!’”’ Isabelle had lived enough since then to realize 
that this vague ‘best self’? of mothers was rarely given to 
anything but distraction. 

Isabelle had been most conscientious as a mother, spared no 
thought or pains for her child from her birth. The trained 
nurse during the first two years, the succession of carefully 
selected governesses since, the lessons, the food, the dentist, 
the doctors, the clothes, the amusements, — all had been 
scrupulously, almost religiously, provided according to the 
best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. 
Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, 
her mother had to confess, the child bored her, — was a 
wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in 
which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to 


576 TOGETHER 


fasten itself on the young organism,.and yet thus far the 
product was tasteless. Perhaps Molly was merely a common- 
place little girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. 
Isabelle’s maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing 
answer, and moreover she did not believe that any young 
thing, any kitten or puppy, could be as colorless, as little 
vital as the exquisite Miss Lane. She must find the real 
cause, study her child, live with her awhile. The next 
generation, apparently, was as inscrutable a manuscript to 
read as hers had been to the Colonel and her mother. Her 
parents had never understood all the longings and aspirations 
that had filled her fermenting years, and now she could not 
comprehend the dumbness of her child. Those fermenting 
years had gone for nothing so far as teaching her to under- 
stand the soul of her child. The new ferment was of a differ- 
ent composition, it seemed... . 


Isabelle was to find that her daughter had developed 
certain tastes besides a love for clothes and a delight in 
riding in motor-cars. .. . Molly was in the library after 
luncheon, absorbed in an illustrated story of a popular 
magazine, which Isabelle glanced over while Miss Joyce 
made ready her charge to accompany her mother to the 
Johnstons’. The story was “innocent,” “clean reading” 
enough, — thin pages of smart dialogue between prettily 
dressed young men and athletic girls, the puppy loves of 
the young rich, — mere stock fiction-padding of the day. 
But the picture of life — the suggestion to the child’s soft 
brain? Isabelle tossed the magazine into the waste basket, 
and yawned. Molly had left it with a sigh. 

On the way to the Bryn Mawr house Isabelle tried to — 
explain to Molly what had happened to the Johnstons through 
the loss of the father, telling her what a good man Steve was, 
the sorrow the family had to bear. Molly listened politely. 

“Yes, mother!’ And she asked, “Are they very 
poor?’’? An innocent remark that irritated Isabelle un- 
reasonably. 


TOGETHER oa 


The children played together downstairs while Isabelle 
discussed with Alice some business matters. It had not 
sounded very lively below, and when the mothers came 
down they found Molly and Belle sitting on opposite sides 
of the little parlor, looking stiffly at each other. The boys 
had slipped off for more stirring adventures outdoors, which 
Molly had refused to join, as she was making a formal call 
with her mother. In the motor going home Molly remarked: 
“The boys haven’t good manners. Belle seems a nice 
girl. She hasn’t been anywhere and can’t talk. That was 
a very homely dress she had on; don’t you think so? Does 
she have to wear dresses like that? Can’t you give her 
something prettier, mamma?” 

Isabelle, who thought her god-daughter an interesting 
child, full of independence and vitality in spite of her shy- 
ness, wondered, “Is Molly just a stick, or only a little 
snob?” See 

Molly was sitting very gracefully in her grandmother’s 
limousine, riding through the parks and avenues with the 
air of a perfect little lady accustomed to observe the world 
from the cushioned seat of a brougham or motor-car. Catch- 
ing sight of a bill board with the announcement of a popular 
young actress’s coming engagement, she remarked: — 

“Miss Daisy May is such a perfect dear, don’t you think, 
mamma? Couldn’t Miss Joyce take me to see her act next 
Saturday afternoon? It’s a perfectly nice play, you know.” 

Repressing a desire to shake her daughter, Isabelle replied: 
“T’ll take you myself, Molly. And shan’t we invite Delia 
Conry? You know she is at school here and has very few 
friends.” 

“Oh!” Molly said thoughtfully. “Delia is so ordinary. 
T should like to ask Beatrice Lawton, — Miss Joyce knows 
her governess. ... Or if we must be good to some one, 
we might take Belle.” 

“We'll take them both.” | 

“T don’t think Beatrice would enjoy Belle,” her daughter 
objected after further reflection. 

2P 


578 TOGETHER 


“Well, I shall ask Delia and Belle, then, to go with me 
alone! ”’ 

(She had looked up the Conry child at the school where 
Vickers had sent her, and had arranged to have her brother’s 
small estate settled on the girl, as she felt he would have 
wished. Delia, whose mother had never been heard from, 
was a forlorn little object and Isabelle pitied her.) 

When her temporary irritation with Molly had passed, she 
saw there was vothing unnatural in the child’s attitude. 
Probably she was a little snob. Most children brought up 
as Molly had been, most of her friends, were little snobs. 
Their governesses taught them snobbery, unconsciously; 
their domestic habits taught them snobbery. 

Isabelle resolved more firmly that she should dispense 
with the excellent Miss Joyce. A beginning very far down 
would have to be made, if she were to reach the individuality 
of this perfectly nurtured modern child of hers. There 
was nothing bad about Molly; she was irritatingly blame- 
less. But what she lacked was appalling! At eighteen she 
would be unendurable. 

And the mother had no warm feeling, no impelling affec- 
tion for her daughter, any more than the child had for her. 
That lack would make it all the harder to do what must be 
done. Here, again, as with her husband, she must begin to 
pay for all the years that she had shirked her job, — for the 
sake of “her own life,” her intellectual emancipation and 
growth, — shirked, to be sure, in the most conscientious and 
enlightened modern manner. 

For nobody could call Miss Lane a neglected child. 


CHAPTER LXXVIII 


Ir would be very simple for Mrs. Price to provide Alice 
with a comfortable income, —the Colonel would have done so; 
and when Isabelle suggested it to her mother after the funeral 
of Steve, the old lady agreed, though she was not of a philan- 
thropic nature and recalled the fact that the marriage had 
been a foolish one. But Alice flatly refused the arrangement. 
She had been trained to work; she was not too old to find 
something to do, and she had already taken. steps to secure 
a place as matron in a hospital. “I am strong,’ she said 
to Isabelle. ‘Steve has left it for me to do, —all of it. 
And I want to show him that I can do it. I shall be hap- 
pier !” 

John had a better comprehension of her feelings and of 
the situation than either Isabelle or her mother. “ Alice is 
an able woman,” he had said; “she will not break down, —she 
is not that kind. And she’ll be happier working.”’ 

So he took care of her little life insurance money. He 
also obtained a scholarship in a technical school for the oldest 
boy, and undertook to fit the second one for college, as he 
showed &tudious tendencies. Isabelle would look after 
Belle’s education. In all these practical details of readjusting 
the broken family, John Lane was more effective than his 
wife, giving generously of his crowded hours to the Johnston 
affairs, ever ready to do all that might be done without 
hurting the widow’s pride and vigorous will. 

And this, as Isabelle knew, came in the days of his 
greatest personal perplexity. His resignation as third vice- 
president had been accepted after protest, negotiations, 
and then had elicited a regretful communication to the 
press ‘emanating from the Senator’s office) of an eulogistic 


‘ature concluding with the delicately phrased suggestion 


579 


580 TOGETHER 


that “Mr. Lane’s untiring devotion to his work necessitates 
his taking a rest from all business cares for the present. It 
is understood that he contemplates a long vacation in 
Europe.” | 

John handed the paper to Isabelle with an ironical smile. 

“You see we are to go abroad,—the usual thing ! 
That’s the Senator’s crafty hand. He wants everything 
decently smooth.” \ 

But the public no longer cared. The coal cases had gone 
up to a higher court on appeal, and when the final decision 
was handed down, the “street’’ would be interested not in 
the question of John Lane’s euilt or innocence, but in the 
more important question of whether the Supreme Court 
“would back up the President’s campaign against capital.” 

Meanwhile, there was none of the social stigma attached 
to the verdict against her husband that Isabelle had reso- 
lutely expected. As soon as it was known that the Lanes 
were established in the city for the spring, their friends 
sought them out and they were invited to dine more than 
Isabelle cared for. In their class, as she quickly perceived 
from jesting references to the trial, such legal difficulties as 
John’s were regarded as merely the disagreeable incidents of 
doing business in a socialistic age. Lane, far from being 
“down and out,” was considered in the industrial and rail- 
road world a strong man rather badly treated by a weak- 
kneed board of directors, who had sought to save them- 
selves from trouble by sacrificing an able servant to the 
public storm. No sooner was his resignation published than 
he received an offer of the presidency of a large transit 
company in the middle West. While he was considering this 
offer, he was approached by representatives of another great 
railroad, which, though largely owned by the same “inter- 
ests” that controlled the Atlantic and Pacific, was generally 
supposed to be a rival. Lane was too valuable a man to be 
lost to the railroad army. The “interests” recognized in 
him a powerful instrument, trained from boyhood for their 
purposes, — one “ who knew how to get business.’”’ The offer 


TOGETHER 581 


flattered Lane, and soothed that sore spot in his inner con- 
sciousness. He saw himself reinstated in his old world, with 
a prospect of crossing swords with his old superiors in a more 
than secondary position. 

Isabelle knew all about this offer. She and her husband 
talked together more freely than they had ever done before. 
The experiences of the past weeks, — Steve’s death, the plan- 
ning for Alice’s future, as well as the emotional result of the 
trial —had brought them nearer an understanding. Lane 
had begun to realize a latent aptitude in his wife for grasping 
the essential matters of business, — investments, risks, cor- 
poration management. She understood far more than the 
distinction between stock and bond, which is supposedly 
the limit of woman’s business intelligence. As the warm 
May days came on they took long rides into the fresh country, 
talking over the endless detail of affairs, — her money, her 
mother’s money, the Colonel’s trust funds, the Johnstons’ 
future, the railroad situation, —all that John Lane had 
hitherto carried tightly shut in his own mind. 

And thus Isabelle began to comprehend the close rela- 
tion between what is called ‘“ business”? and the human 
matters of daily life for every individual in this complex 
world. There was not simply a broad mark between right 
and wrong, — dramatic trials; but the very souls of men and 
women were involved in the vast machine of labor and profit. 

She was astonished to discover the extent of her husband’s 
interests, his personal fortune, which had grown amazingly 
during these last ten fat years of the country’s prosperity. 

“Why, you don’t have to take any position!” 

“Yes, we could afford to make that European trip the 
Board so kindly indicated.” 

_ “We might go abroad,” she said thoughtfully. 

A few years before she would have grasped the chance to 
live in Europe indefinitely. Now she found no inclination 
in her spirit for this solution. 

“Tt isn’t exactly the time to leave home,” her husband 
bjected; “there is sure to be a severe panic betore long. 


582 ‘TOGETHER 


All this agitation has unsettled business, and the country 
must reap the consequences. We could go for a few months, 
perhaps.” | 

“Tt wouldn’t be good for Molly.” 

And though she did not say it, it would not be good for 
him to leave the struggle for any length of time. Once 
out of the game of life, for which he had been trained like an 
athlete, he would degenerate and lose his peculiar power. 
And yet she shrank unaccountably from his reéntering the 
old life, with the bitter feeling in his heart he now had. 
It meant their living in New York, for one thing, and a 
growing repugnance to that huge, squirming, prodigal hive 
had come over her. Once the pinnacle of her ambitions, 
now it seemed sordid, hectic, unreal. Yet she was too wise 
to offer her objections, to argue the matter, any more than to 
open the personal wound of his trial and conviction. In- 
fluence, at least with a man of John Lane’s fibre, must be 
a subtle, slow process, depending on mutual confidence, 
comprehension. And she must first see clearly what she 
herself knew to be best. So she listened, waiting for the 
vision which would surely come. 

In these business talks her mind grasped more and more 
the issues of American life. She learned to recognize the 
distinction between the officials of corporations and the 
control behind, — the money power. There emerged into 
view something of a panorama of industry, organized on 
modern lines, — the millions of workers in the industrial 
armies, the infinite gradations of leadership in these armies, 
and finally far off in the distance, among the cafions of the 
skyscrapers in the great cities, the Mind of it all, the Control, 
the massed Capital. There were the Marshals’ quarters! 
Even the chiefs of great corporations were “little people”’ 
compared with their real employers, the men who controlled 
capital. And into that circle of intoxicating power, within 
its influence, she felt that her husband was slowly moving, — 
would ultimately arrive, if success came, — at the height of 
modern fame. Men did not reach the Marshals’ quarters with 


TOGETHER 583 


a few hundred thousands of dollars, nor with a few millions, 
with savings and inheritances and prudent thrift. They 
must have tens of millions at their command. And these 
millions came through alliances, manipulations, deals, by 
all sorts of devices whereby money could be made to spawn 
miraculously. ... 

Meanwhile the worker earned his wage, and the minor 
officers their salaries — what had they to complain of ? — 
but the pelf went up to the Marshals’ camp, the larger part 
of it, —in this land where all were born free and equal. 
No! Isabelle shuddered at the spectacle of the bloody road 
up to the camp, and prayed that her life might not be lived 
in an atmosphere of blood and alarms and noisy strife, even 
for the sake of millions of dollars and limitless Power. 

One evening in this period of dubitation Lane remarked 
casually : — 

“Your father’s friend, Pete Larrimore, came in to-day to 
see me. Do you remember him, Isabelle? The old fellow 
with the mutton-chop whiskers, who used to send us bags of 
coffee from his plantation in Mexico.” 

“ Awful coffee, — we couldn’t give it away!” 

“He wanted to talk to me about a scheme he is interested 
in. It seems that he has a lot of property in the southwest, 
Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, some of it very valu- 
able. Among other things he has become involved in a 
railroad. It was started by some people who hadn’t the 
capital to carry it through, and now it begins nowhere and 
ends in the same place. Larrimore and his friends think 
they can get the capital to carry the road south to the line 
and up north, and ultimately will sell it perhaps to one of the 
big systems. ... They are Apel for a man to build it 
and push it through.”’ 

“What did you say?” Isabelle Mlemanded eagerly. 

“Oh, I just listened. If they can get the money, it might 
be successful. That country is Brewing fast... . It would 
be a chance for some young man to win his spurs, — hard 
work, though.” 


584 TOGETHER 


He talked on, explaining the strategic position of the new 
road, its relation to rivals, the prospects of that part of the 
country, the present condition of the money market in respect 
to new enterprises; for Isabelle seemed interested. But 
when she interrupted with sudden energy, “Do it, John! 
Why don’t you take it?’’ he looked puzzled. 

“Tt is a young man’s job, — pioneer work.” 

“But you are young — we are young! And it would be 
something worth doing, pioneer work, building up a new 
country like that.” 

“There’s not much money in it,” he replied, smiling at her 
girlish enthusiasm, “and I am afraid not much fame.” 

Not money, not the fame of the gladiator, the fame of the 
money power; merely the good report of a labor compe- 
tently performed, the reward of energy and capacity — and 
the thing done itself. But to Isabelle this pioneer quality 
of the work appealed strongly. Her imagination expanded 
under the idea. 

“TI can see you living for the next ten years in a small 
Texas town!’ he jested. “ However, I suppose you wouldn’t 
live out there.” 

“But I should!” she protested. “And it is what I should 
like best of all, I think—the freedom, the open air, the new 
life !”’ 

So from a merely casual suggestion that Lane had not 
thought worth serious consideration, there began to grow 
between them a new conception of their future. And the 
change that these last weeks had brought was marked by 
the freedom with which husband and wife talked not only 
about the future, but about the past. Isabelle tried to tell 
her husband what had been going on within her at the trial, 
and since then. 

“T know,” she said, “that you will say I can’t understand, 
that my feeling is only a woman’s squeamishness or ignorance. 

But, John, I can’t bear to think of our going back to 
it, living on in that. way, the hard way of success, as it would 
be in New York.” 


TOGETHER 585 


' Lane looked at her narrowly. He was trying to account 
for this new attitude in his wife. That she would be pleased, 
or at least indifferent, at the prospect of returning to the East, 
to the New York life that she had always longed for and 
apparently enjoyed, he had taken for granted. Yet in spite 
of the fixed lines in which his nature ran and the engrossing 
preoccupations of his interests, he had felt many changes in 
Isabelle since her return to St. Louis, — changes that he 
ascribed generally to the improvement in her health,— better 
herves, — but that he could not altogether formulate. Per- 
haps they were the indirect result of her brother’s death. 
At any rate his wife’s new interest in business, in his affairs, 
pleased him. He liked to talk things over with her. . ... 

Thus the days went steadily by towards the decision. 
Lane had promised his wife to consider the Larrimore 
offer. One morning the cable brought the startling news 
‘that the president of the Atlantic and Pacific had committed 
‘suicide in his hotel room in Paris the evening before he was 
to sail for home. “ Bad health and nervous collapse,’’ was 
the explanation in the despatch. But that a man of sixty- 
three, with a long record of honorable success, a large for- 
tune, no family troubles, should suddenly take his own life, 
naturally roused the liveliest amazement throughout the 
country. Nobody believed that the cable told the whole 
truth; but the real reasons for the desperate act were locked 
tight among the directors of the railroad corporation and a 
few intimate heads of control — who know all. 

Lane read the news to Isabelle. It shook him perceptibly. 
He had known Farrington Beals for years, ever since at the 
Colonel’s suggestion he had been picked out of the army of 
underlings and given his first chance. Isabelle remembered 
him even longer, and especially at her wedding with the 
Senator and her father. They were old family friends, the 
Bealses. 

‘How terrible for Mrs. Beals and Elsie!’’ she exclaimed. 
“How could he have done it! The family was so happy. 
They all adored him! And he was about to retire, Elsie 


586 TOGETHER 


told me when I saw her last, and they were all going around 
the world in their yacht.... He couldn’t have been 
very ill.” | | 

“No, I am afraid that wasn’t the only reason,” John 
admitted, walking to and fro nervously. 

He was thinking of all that the old man had done for him, 
his resentment at his chief’s final desertion of him forgotten ; 
of how he had learned his job, been trained to pull his load 
by the dead man, who had always encouraged him, pushed 
him forward. 

“Fe went over for a little rest, you said. And he always 
went every year about this time for a vacation and to buy 
pictures. Don’t you remember, John, what funny things he 
bought, and how the family laughed at him?” 

“Yes, —I know.”’ He also knew that the president of the 
Atlantic and Pacific had gone across the ocean “ for his yearly 
vacation” just at the opening of the coal investigation to 
escape the scandal of the trial, and had not returned at the 
usual time, although the financial world was unsettled. And 
he knew other things; for already clubs and inner offices 
had been buzzing with rumors. 

“Tam afraid that it is worse than it seems,” he said to his 
wife on his return from the city that afternoon. “ Beals was 
terribly involved. I hear that a bank he was interested in 
has been closed. . . . He was tied up fast — in all sorts of 
ways!” 

“John!” Isabelle cried, and paused. Did this old man’s 
death mean another scandal, ruin for another family, and 
one she had known well, — disgrace, scandal, possibly 
poverty ? 

“ Beals was always in the market — and this panic hit him 
hard; he was on the wrong side lately.”’ 

It was an old story, not in every case with the same 
details, but horribly common, —a man of the finest. possi- 
bilities, of sturdy character, rising up to the heights of 
ambition, then losing his head, playing the game wantonly 
for mere pride and habit in it, — his judgment giving way, 

: 


TOGETHER 587 


but playing on, stumbling, grasping at this and that to stop 
his sliding feet, breaking the elementary laws! And finally, 
in the face of disaster, alone in a hotel room the lonely old 
man —no doubt mentally broken by the strain — putting 
the pistol to his head with his shaking hand. And, after- 
wards, the débris of his wreck would be swept aside to clear 
the road for others! 

Farrington Beals was not a single case. In this time of 
money disturbance, suicide and dishonor were rife in the 
streets, revealing the rotten timber that could not stand the 
strain of modern life, lived as it had been lived the past 
ten years. It was not one blast that uprooted weak members 
of the forest, but the eating decay of the previous years, 
working at the heart of many lives. ‘‘ The frantic egotism of 
the age!’’ Yes, and the divided souls, never at peace until 
death put an end to the strife at last, — too much for little 
bodies of nerve and tissue to stand, — the racking of divided 
wills, divided souls. 

“John!” Isabelle cried that night, after they had again 
talked over the tragedy; “let us go — go out there — to a 
new land!’’ She rose from the lounge and swept across the 
room with the energy of clear purpose — of Vision. ‘Let 
us put ourselves as far as possible out of this sort of thing! 

It will kill us both. Do it for my sake, even if you 
can’t feel as I do!”’ 

And then there poured forth all the story of these years, of 
their life apart, as she had come to see it the last months, in 
the remote and peaceful hills, in the court-room, in the plain 
pathos of Steve’s death and Alice’s heroism, and now in this 
suicide, —all that had given her insight and made her different 
from what she had been, — all that revealed the cheap- 
ness of her old ideals of freedom, intellectual development, 
self-satisfaction, that cult of the ego, which she had pursued 
in sympathy with the age. Now she wished to put it away, 
to remove herself and her husband, their lives together, 
outwardly as she had withdrawn herself inwardly. And 
her husband, moved in spite of himself by her tense desire, 


588 TOGETHER 


the energy of her words, listened and comprehended — in 
part. 

“T have never been a real wife to you, John. I don’t 
mean just my love for that other man, when you were nobly 
generous with me. But before that, in other ways, in almost 
all ways that make a woman a wife, a real wife. ... Nowl 
want to be a real wife. I want to be with you in all things. 
; You can’t see the importance of this stepas Ido. Men 
and women are different, always. But there is something 
within me, underneath, like an inner light that makes me 
see clearly now, — not conscience, but a kind of flame that 
guides. In the light of that I see what a petty fool I have 
been. It all had to be —I don’t regret because it all had 
to be —the terrible waste, the sacrifice,” she whispered, 
thinking of Vickers. ‘‘Only now we must live, you and 
I together, — together live as we have never lived before!” 

She held out her hands to him as she spoke, her head erect, 
and as he waited, still tied by years of self-repression, she 
went to him and put her arms about him, drawing her to him, 
to her breast, to her eyes. Ten years before he had adored 
her, desired her passionately, and she had shrunk from him. 
Then life had come imperceptibly in between them; he had 
gone his way, she hers. Now she was offering herself to him. 
And she was more desirable than before, more woman, — at 
last whole. The appeal that had never been wholly stifled 
in the man still beat in his pulses for the woman. And the 
appeal never wholly roused in the woman by him reached 
out now for him; but an appeal not merely of the senses, 
higher than anything Cairy could rouse in a woman, an ap- 
peal, limitless, of comradeship, purpose, wills. He kissed 
her, holding her close to him, realizing that she too held him 
in the inner place of her being. 

“We will begin again,” he said. 

“Our new life — together !”’ 


And this is Influence, the work of one will upon another, 
sometimes apparent, dramatic, tragic; sometimes subtle, 


TOGETHER 589 


‘unknowable, speaking across dark gulfs. The meaning of 
that dead man’s austere face, the howl of journalists on his 
uncovered trail, the old man dead in his hotel room dis- 
graced, the deep current of purpose in his new wife, — all 
“these and much more sent messages into the man’s unyield- 
ing soul to change the atmosphere therein, to alter the val- 
‘ues of things seen, to shape — at last — the will. For what 
“makesan act? Filaments of nerve, some shadowy unknown 
process in brain cells? These are bat symbols for mystery! 
‘Life pressing multifariously its changing suggestions upon 
“the sentient organism prompts, at last, the act. But there 
‘is something deeper than the known in all this wondrous 
complexity. . 

John Lane, the man of fact, the ordered efficient will, 
‘was dimly conscious of forces other than physical ones, 
beyond, — not recognizable as motives, — self-created and 
impelling, nevertheless; forces welling up from the tene- 
_brous spaces in the depths of his being, beneath conscious 
life. And at last, something higher than Judgment swayed 
the man, 





CHAPTER LXXIX 


Tur private car Olympus had been switched for the day 
to a siding at the little town of Orano on the edge of the 
Texas upland. The party within — the Lanes, Margaret 
and her children, and several men interested in the new 
railroad — had been making a leisurely tour of inspection, 
passing through the fertile prairies and woodlands of Okla- 
homa, stopping often at the little towns that were spring- 
ing up along the road, aiming south until they had reached 
the Panhandle. These September days the harvests were 
rich and heavy, covered with a golden haze of heat, — the 
sweat of earth’s accomplishment. The new soil was laden 
with its fruit. ‘The men had been amazed by the fertility, 
the force of the country. ‘Traffic, traffic,’ Lane had 
murmured enthusiastically, divining with his trained eye 
the enormous possibilities of the land, the future for the 
iron highroad he was pushing through it. Traffic, — in 
other words, growth, business, human effort and human life, 
—that is the cosmic song that sings itself along the iron 
road. 

Margaret had said mockingly : — 

“ Wouldn’t it do our New York friends a world of good to 
get out here once a year and realize that life goes on, and very 
real life, outside the narrow shores of Manhattan Re 

That was the illuminating thought which had come to 
them all in different ways during this slow progress from St. 
Louis south and west. This broad land of states had a vital 
existence, a life of its own, everywhere, not merely in the 
great centres, the glutted metropolitan points. Men lived 
and worked, happily, constructively, in thousands and 
thousands of small places, where the seaboard had sunk far 
beneath the eastern horizon. Life was real, to be lived 

590 


TOGETHER 591 


vitally, as much here in prairie and plain as anywhere on the 
earth’s surface. The feeling which had come to Isabelle 
on her westward journey in March — the conviction that 
each one counted, had his own terrestrial struggle, his own 
celestial drama, differing very little in importance from his 
neighbor’s; each one — man, woman, or child — in all the 
wonderful completeness of life throughout the millions— 
Swept over her again here where the race was sowing new 
land. And lying awake in the stillness of the autumn 
morning on the lofty plateau, as she listened to the colored 
servants chaffing at their work, there came to her the true 
meaning of that perplexing phrase, which had sounded with 
the mockery of empty poetry on the lips of the district 
attorney, — ‘‘ All men born free and equal.’”’ Yes! in the 
realm of their spirits, in their souls, — the inner, moving 
part of them, “free and equal’! .. . | 

“It’s the roof of the world!’’ Margaret said, as she jumped 
from the car platform and looked over the upland, — whim- 
sically recalling the name of a popular play then running in 
New York. 

An unawakened country, dry and untilled, awaiting the 
hand of the master, it lifted westward in colored billows of 
undulating land. Under the clear morning sun it was still 
and fresh, yet untouched, untamed. 

“Tt 7s the roof of the world,” she repeated, “high and dry 
and extraordinarily vast, — leading your eyes onward and 
upward to the heavens, with all the rest of the earth below 
you in the fog. How I should like to live here always! If 
I were you, Isabelle, I should get your husband to give you 
a freight-car like those the gangs of track-layers use, with 
a little stovepipe sticking out of one corner, and just camp 
down in it here, — on the roof of the world.”’ 

She lifted her thin, delicate face to the sun, reaching out 
her arms to it hungrily. 

“We must sleep out to-night under the stars, and talk — 
oh, much talk, out here under the stars!” 

During the past year at Grosvenor her frail body had 


592 TOGETHER 


strengthened, revived; she was now firm and vigorous. 
Only the deep eyes and the lines above them and about the 
mouth, the curve of the nostril and chin, showed as on a finely 
chased coin the subtle chiselling of life. And here in the 
uplands, in the great spaces of earth and sky, the elemental 
desire of her soul seemed at last wholly appeased, the longing 
for space and height and light, the longing for deeds and 
beauty and Peace. At last, after the false roads, the fret and 
rebellion, she had emerged into the upper air. . . 

“How well the little man rides!’’ Isabelle reijagked as the 
children went by them on some ponies they had found. 

Margaret’s face glowed with pride. 

‘Yes, Ned has improved very fast. He will go to school 
with the others now. .. . The doctor has really saved his 
life — and mine, too,’”’ she murmured. 


So the two slept out under the stars, as Margaret wished, 
with dotted heavens close above and vague space all. 
about; and they talked into the morning of past years, of 
matters that meant too much to them both for daylight 
speech. Isabelle spoke of Vickers, of the apparent waste of 
his life. ‘‘I can see now,”’ she said, “‘ that in going away with 
that woman as he did he expressed the real soul of him, as 
he did in dying for me. He was born to love and to give, 
and the world broke him. But heescaped!’” And she could 
not say even to Margaret what she felt, —that he had laid 
it on her to express his defeated life. 

They spoke even of Conny. ‘“ You received the cards for - 
her wedding?” Margaret asked. “The man is a stock- 
broker, She is turning her talents to a new field, — money. 
I hear the wedding was very smart, and they are to live on 
Long Island, with a yacht and half a dozen motors.”’ 

“T thought she would marry—differently,” Isabelle ob- 
served vaguely, recalling the last time she had seen Conny. 

“No! Conny knows her world perfectly, — that’s her 
strength. And she knows exactly what to take from it to 
suit her. She is a bronze Cleopatra with modern variations. 


TOGETHER 593 


I think they ought to put her figure on the gold eagles as the 
American Woman Triumphant, ruling her world.” 

“And on the other side the figure of a Vampire, sucking 
at the souls of men.” ... 

And then they talked of the future, the New Life, as it 
would shape itself for Isabelle and her husband, talked as 
if the earth were fresh and life but in the opening. 

“He may do something else than this,” Isabelle said. 
“‘He has immense power. But I hope it will always be 
something outside the main wheels of industry,as Mr. Gossom 
would say,—something with another kind of reward than 
the Wall Street crown.” 

“T wish he might find work here for Rob,” Margaret said; 
“something out here where he belongs that will not pay him 
in.fame or money. For he has that other thing in him, the 
love of beauty, of the ideal.’”’ She spoke with ease and 
naturally of her lover. ‘‘ And there has been so little that 
is ideal in his life, — so little to feed his spirit.”’ 

And she added in a low voice, ‘‘I saw her in New York — 


his wife.” 

‘* Bessie !”’ 

“Yes, — she was there with the girl, — Mildred. ... I 
went to see her — I[hadto. . .. Iwentseveral times. She 


seemed to like me. Do you know, there is something very 
lovable in that woman; I can see why Rob married her. 
She has wrecked herself, — her own life. She would never 
submit to what the doctor calls the discipline of life. She 
liked herself just as she was; she wanted to be always a 
child of nature, to win the world with her charm, to have 
everything nice and pleasant and gay about her, and be 
petted into the bargain. Now she is gray and homely and 
in bad health--and bitter. It is pitiful to wake up at forty 
after you have been a child all your life, and realize that life 
was never what you thought it was. ... I was very sorry 
for her ts |. 
“Will they ever come together again?” 
“Perhaps! Who knows? The girl must bring them to- 
2Q 


594 TOGETHER 


gether; she will not be wholly satisfied with her mother, 
and Rob needs his daughter. . . . I hope so — for his sake. 
But it will be hard for them both, — hard for him to live with 
a spent woman, and hard for her to know that she has missed 
what she wanted and never quite to understand why... . 
But it may be better than we can see, — there is always so 
much of the unknown in every one. That is the great 
uplifting thought! We live in space and above unseen 
depths. And voices rise sometimes from the depths.” 

And lying there under the stars Margaret thought what 
she could not speak, — of the voice that had risen within her 
and made her refuse the utmost of personal joy. She had 
kissed her lover and held him in her arms and sent him away 
from her. Without him she could not have lived; nor could 
she live keeping him... . 

At last they came to Renault, the one who had opened 
their eyes to life and to themselves. 

“Still working,’’ Margaret said, ‘‘ burning up there in the 
hills like a steady flame! Some day he will go out, — not die, 
just wholly consume from within, like one of those old 
lamps that burn until there is nothing, no oil left, not even 
the dust of the wick.”’ 

As the faint morning breeze began to draw across the up- 
land they fell asleep, clasping hands. 


CHAPTER LXXX 


THE rising sun had barely shot its first beams over the 
eastern swell when Lane came to the tent to call them for 
the early breakfast before the day’s expedition to a wonderful 
cafion. Isabelle, making a sign to John not to disturb 
Margaret, who was still fast asleep, drew the blanket over 
her shoulders and joined her husband. The level light 
flooded the rolling upland with a sudden glory of gold, 
except along the outer rim of the horizen where the twilight 
color of deep violet still held. Husband and wife strolled 
away from the tents in the path of the sun. 

“ Big, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. 

“Yes!” she murmured. “It is a big, big world!”? And 
linking her arm in his they walked on towards the sun 
together. 

In the morning light the earth was fresh and large and 
joyous. And life, as Renault had said over the body of the 
dead child, seemed good, all of it! That which was past, 
lived vainly and in stress, and that which was to come as 
well. So Alice had affirmed in the presence of her bereave- 
ment. ... Life is good, all of it, — all its devious paths 
and issues! 

“Tt is so good to be here with you!”’ Isabelle whispered 
to her husband. 

“Yes, — it is a good beginning,” he replied. And in his 
face she read that he also understood that a larger life was 
beginning for them both. 

As they turned back to the tents, they saw Margaret hud- 
dled in her blanket like a squaw, gazing steadily at the sun. 

“‘ And the morrow is added to the morrow to make eter- 
nity,”’ she was murmuring to herself. ‘“ But always a new 
world, a new light, a new life!”’ 


595 





Mr. ROBERT HERRICK’S NOVELS 


Cloth, extra, gilt tops, each, $2.50 


The Gospel of Freedom 


“‘A novel that may truly be called the greatest study of social life, in a 
broad and very much up-to-date sense, that has ever been contributed to 
American fiction.” — Chicago Inter-Ocean, 


The Web of Life 


“It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American life, and 
uses them to strengthen a web of fiction, which is most artistically wrought 
out.” — Buffalo Express. 


The Real World 


“The title of the book has a subtle intention. It indicates, and is true to 
the verities in doing so, the strange dreamlike quality of life to the man 
who has not yet fought his own battles, or come into conscious possession 
of his will—only such battles bite into the consciousness.” — Chicago 
Tribune. 


The Common Lot 


“It grips the reader tremendously. ... It is the drama of a human soul 
the reider watches . . . the finest study of human motive that has appeared 
for many a day.” — Zhe World To-day. 


The Memoirs of an American Citizen. Illustrated 
with about fifty drawings by F. B. Masters. 


“Mr. Herrick’s book is a book among many, and he comes nearer to 
reflecting a certain kind of recognizable, contemporaneous American spirit 
than anybody has yet done.” — New York Times. 

“Intensely absorbing as a story, it is also a crisp, vigorous document of 
Startling significance. More than any other writer to-day he is giving us 
the American novel.” — New York Glove. 


Together 


“Journeys end in lovers meeting,” says the old saw; so all novels used 
to end —in marriage. Yet Mr. Herrick’s interesting new novel only 
begins there; the best brief description of it is, indeed,—a novel about 
married people for all who are married. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL’S NOVELS 


Each, cloth, gilt tops and titles, $1.50 


The Celebrity. An Episode 


“No such piece of inimitable comedy in a literary way has appeared for 
years.... Itis the purest, keenest fun.” — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 


Richard Carvel ' Tilustrated 


“. .. In breadth of canvas, massing of dramatic effect, depth of feeling, and 
rare wholesomeness of spirit, it has seldom, if ever, been surpassed by an 
American romance.” — Chicago Tribune. 


The Crossing | Illustrated 


“The Crossing is a thoroughly interesting book, packed with exciting 
adventure and sentimental incident, yet faithful to historical fact both in 
detail and in spirit.” — Zhe Dial. 


The Crisis Illustrated 


“Tt is a charming love story, and never loses its interest.... The intense 
political bitterness, the intense patriotism of both parties, are shown under- 
standingly.” — Avening Telegraph, Philadelphia, 


Coniston Illustrated 


“ Coniston has a lighter, gayer spirit, and a deeper, tenderer touch than 
Mr. Churchill has ever achieved before. ... It is one of the truest and finest 
transcripts of modern American life thus far achieved in our fiction,” —~ 
Chicago Record-Herald, 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


Z 
2 


NOVELS, ETC., BY ‘“‘BARBARA”’ 


(MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT) 


Each, in decorated cloth binding, $1.50 


The Garden of a Commuter’s Wife Tilustrated 


“ Reading it is like having the entry into a home of the class that is the 
proudest product of our land,a home where love of books and love of 
nature go hand in hand with hearty, simple love of ‘folks.’ ... It isa 
charming book.” — Zhe /uterior. 


People of the Whirlpool Illustrated 


“The whole book is delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just per- 
spective of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of people and 
customs, and its healthy optimism for the great world in general,’ — 
Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. 


The Woman Errant 


“The book is worth reading. It will cause discussion. It is an interest- 
ing fictional presentation of an important modern question, treated with 
fascinating feminine adroitness.’"’— Miss JEANNETTE GILDER in The Chi- 
cago Tribune. 


At the Sign of the Fox 


“ Her little pictures of country life are fragrant with a genuine love of 
nature, and there is fun as genuine in her notes on rural character. A 
travelling pieman is one ot her most lovable personages; another is Tatters, 
a dog, who is humanly winsome and wise, and will not soon be forgotten 
by the reader of this very entertaining book.” — New York Tribune. 


The Garden, You and I 


“This volume is simply the best she has yet put forth, and quite too deli- 
ciously torturing to the reviewer, whose only garden is in Spain. ... The 
delightful humor which pervaded the earlier books, and without which 
Barbara would not be Barbara, has lost nothing of its poignancy, and 
would make ‘The Garden, You and I’ pleasant reading even to the man 
who doesn’t know a pink from a phlox or a Daphne cneorum from a 
Cherokee rose.” — Congregationalist. 


The Open Window. Tales of the Months. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


MR. CRAWFORD’S Latest Nove ts 


Each, cloth, r2mo, $1.50 


The Primadonna ee | 
“Mr. Crawford is a born story-teller. His imagination and inventive. 
ness show as fresh and unwearied in his latest book as they did ix 
‘Mr. Isaacs,’""— Evening Telegraph, Philadelphia. 


( 


Fair Margaret. A Portrait. 


“An exhilarating romance, . .. alluring in its naturalness and grace.’ 
— Boston Herald, 


Arethusa 


Dr. Frederick Taber Cooper, in 7he Bookman, says of Mr. Crawford: 
“‘In theory Mr. Crawford is a romanticist; in practice he is in turn 
realist, psychologue, mystic, whatever for the moment suits his needs 
or appeals to his instinct of born story-teller.” He calls him, in fact, 
as others have done, “ the prince of story-tellers.” 


By the author of “Saracinesca,” ete. 


FRANK DANBY’S New Nove 
The Heart of a Child Chth, $7.50 


‘*A book of such strength, such fineness, such sympathetic insight .. . 
stands out conspicuously above the general level of contemporary 
fiction.” — 7ke Bookman. 


JACK LONDON’S New Nove 
The Iron Heel Chth, $r.50 


“Mr. London takes a big question, and treats it in his original and © 
daring way " — that interest-compelling way which has made the critics . 
class him as “ one of the half-dozen American writers with the real 
story-telling gift,” ever since his “The Call of the Wild.” 





THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


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